


frostbite (and heartsickness)

by hedahawkeye



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F, Superheroes, Winter Soldier AU, marvel AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-04-29 10:26:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 21
Words: 50,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14470644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hedahawkeye/pseuds/hedahawkeye
Summary: Clarke loses Sergeant Alexandra Callaghan in the snow in the dying days of World War II.She loses the Winter Soldier during the fall of HYDRA.And when the Soldier surrenders and SHIELD comes crumbling down around them, the only hope Clarke has left to cling to in the wake of losing everything is that maybe she'll be able to help Lexa find herself.[Winter Soldier AU]





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> come chat at [my tumblr](http://hedahawkeye.tumblr.com)

**April 3, 2014**

\--

The Winter Soldier hits the ground with a crack, and when she rolls back to her feet the mask stays on the concrete. She turns slowly, and the bottom plummets out of Clarke's stomach.

There may be warpaint smudged across her cheeks, her eyes may be empty, _dead,_ but Clarke could never forget that face.

In her shock, she barely registers that the fingers of the metal arm are cool on her throat, that the pressure is far too light. "You don't have to do this. I know you're not choosing this, Lexa."

"Who the hell is Lexa?"

\--

The ringing in Clarke's ears doesn't abate, even when she's shoved face down into the ground with the barrel of a rifle pressed between her shoulder blades, even when they're cuffed in the back of an armoured SHIELD van.

"She looked right at me like she didn't even know me."

Monty shakes his head. "How is that even possible?"

"Tsing. Lexa's whole unit was captured, and Tsing experimented on her. Whatever she did helped Lexa survive the fall. They must have found her-"

"None of that's your fault, Clarke," Anya interjects, but when Clarke looks over the spy won't meet her eyes.

"I should have looked for her. She would have, we always had each other's backs. Even when I had nothing, I had Lexa."

\--

She imagines she can feel the mechanic working away on her arm as she leans back in the exam chair, and she lets her eyes drift closed in a failed attempt to avoid the sensation. There's a jolt of pain in the side of her head, where ground had met helmet and knocked her mask free of her face, and she winces, squeezes her eyes tighter shut, sends off pressure bursts behind her eyelids.

The soldier's face drifts through her head, hazy, focused only on blonde and shock and fear, _"Lexa!"_ , and then she's falling, sky and cold and white, blinding white, pain, frozen, hands on her jacket, blood on the snow, ice crystals down her back and foreign words in her ears

 _"The procedure is already started."_ Bright and deafening, drill, saw, cut, scar, _hurt_

Glistening metal, fingers clutching tight around a fragile throat, _Tsing_

Ice, cold, _frost_ , empty eyes staring back from the reflection of an unfamiliar face

Rage, confusion, flailing, bones crushed beneath her fists, _clickclickclick_ staringdownthebarrelsofathousandguns

She shakes herself upright, out of the flashes, just in time to catch a faint "-unstable, erratic-" from across the room before Cage Wallace strides in, motions for the guards to lower their weapons.

"Mission report."

She stares forward, the tendrils of memories drifting around behind the man, navy armour and pale skin.

"Mission report, _now._ "

Cage moves forward, and she's too distracted by the remnants of blonde shifting around his head, doesn't see the strike coming until she's flung to the side, cheek stinging, spots drifting across her vision. She turns back to him in confusion, lips moving silently for a moment before she can find the words.

"The woman on the bridge," she says slowly, the blonde coming clear in her mind's eye, if just for a moment, the dirt-streaked face and piercing gaze, "who was she?"

"You met her earlier this week on another assignment."

Her eyes dart from side to side, trying to pull up _anything_ , because there's something haunting in those blue eyes, something barely there but still strong enough that she knows instinctively that she's not getting the whole truth. "I knew her," slips from her lips, quiet but resolute, and Cage narrows his eyes at her before taking a seat in front of her.

"Your work has been a gift to mankind," he states, but she can recognize the attempt to divert her attention for what it is, can barely focus on it, _"Lexa!"_ too loud in her head. "You shaped the century, and I need you to do it one more time. Society is at a tipping point between order and chaos, and tomorrow morning we're going to give it a push. But, if you don't do your part, I can't do mine," she swallows roughly, her shoulders falling, "and Hydra can't give the world the freedom it deserves."

"But I _knew_ her," she repeats, pursing her lips in frustration.

Cage sighs and stands. "Prep her."

"She's been out of cryo too long," one of his aides replies, as she watches, face falling when she digs through her head only to come up empty. There has to be _something_ , she _knows her_.

"Then wipe her and start over," and the room is swimming, fading until she can barely feel the hands pushing her back down into the chair. She opens her mouth for the gumshield, her chest heaving, those words mean _pain_ , and the straps are tight around her arm and the _buzzing_ , the helmet coming down, and the last thing she remembers is her teeth clamping down hard in the rubber to bite back her screams.

\--

She's curled up on the sofa in the safehouse, knees tucked up into her chest and arms wrapped tight around them, when Anya emerges from the washroom, damp hair pulled back over one shoulder.

"You knew her."

Anya takes a seat on a stool by the counter. "Not by that name."

"The Black Widow and the Winter Soldier." Clarke fiddles absently with the hem of her shirt. "You worked together, killed together."

"We did."

"How am I supposed to trust you to have my back when you kept something like this from me?"

"I didn't know Alexandra Callaghan and the Winter Soldier were one and the same until today."

Clarke bites her bottom lip, worries it between her teeth as she nods slowly.

"She's going to be there tomorrow," Anya states, standing and leaning her back against the edge of the counter. "You need to know that she's not the same person as whoever it was she used to be, Clarke. And the Winter Soldier? She's not the kind you can save. She's the kind you stop."

"I don't know if I can do that."

"She might not give you a choice. She doesn't know you."

"She will," she says firmly, as if stating it will make the words come true.

\--

It doesn't.


	2. Chapter 2

**January 11, 1945**

\--

_Lexa's behind her, on the roof and in the carriage, footsteps light and rifle up. Clarke moves into the next carriage, but the footsteps pause, and she whirls around in time for Lexa to slam the door shut on her before wheeling and firing on HYDRA soldiers. She knocks her free hand against the glass, cursing the stubborn little shit, and then turns just in time to meet her own adversary, all metal armor and rattling guns._

_She crouches behind her shield, choosing her moments to shoot wisely, and there's the pounding of shot after shot from the car behind. The man peers past her, the distraction giving her just enough time to cross the car and slam into him, dropping him to the ground. She cocks her arm back and drives the edge of her shield into his armour-covered throat, a sick satisfaction blooming in her chest at the crunch of metal beneath metal._

_She aims his heavy artillery at the door Lexa had locked between them and fires, following closely behind as it is blown apart. Clarke crosses the platform between the cars and catches a glimpse of Lexa through the window, face pale and chest heaving wildly as she reloads her gun. She hefts her shield in her arm and readies her pistol, then elbows the button for the door and quickly tosses the pistol over to Lexa._

_She rushes forward, throwing herself into a crate that slides towards the HYDRA agent, and as the man dives out of the way, Lexa catches him with a bullet to the chest. He hits the floor with a shout, and Lexa looks towards her, mock frown plastered on her face._

_"I had him on the ropes."_

_"I know you did," she laughs, grinning over at her, the moment frozen, perfect._

_The hiss of the heavy artillery recharging is all the warning they have before the armored man reappears from the other car. Clarke throws herself in front of Lexa, shield up, and the blast comes, tossing her aside and smashing her head against the floor. The air freezes in her lungs, and as she pushes herself up she realizes distantly that the side of the train has been blown open._

_Lexa sweeps up the shield and stands in the middle of the carriage, firing at the armored man as Clarke tries valiantly to reach her feet. A blast hits the very centre of the star, sends Lexa flying, and Clarke scrambles to her feet. She's all fire and rage as she grabs the shield, sends it harder than she ever imagined possible at the man and knocking him back into the other car as she darts towards the side of the train and looks out over the edge._

_"Lexa!" She's found a tenuous hold on a bar on the side of the train, her shoes scrabbling for a foothold. "Hang on!" Clarke inches out as far as she can, reaching her hand out as Lexa struggles to keep her grip firm. "Grab my hand!" The bolts screech as they rip out from the train, and Lexa throws a hand towards her, eyes wide with panic. "No!" Clarke strains forward, but her glove only finds thin air, and she spares the falling body one last look before pressing her face into the side of her wrist and biting back tears._

_Lexa dies in silence._

\--

**September 7, 2014**

\--

The first time Clarke sees Lexa after she surrenders to SHIELD she's fresh off a two week stint in some shithole in Eastern Europe, chasing a trail that had gone cold mere hours after their wheels touched down on crumbling tarmac. She stumbles into her apartment dirty and blood-stained, leaves a trail of uniform pieces and tactical gear from her front door halfway across her living room before she realizes that the lights had been on when she'd entered her home.

Anya unfolds her legs and picks herself up off the couch, her face revealing even less than usual. Her features are almost too blank, and that may well be half the reason that there's a sinking feeling in the pit of Clarke's stomach the moment they lock eyes.

"They brought her in this morning."

She’s awaited this news for months, wished that it would come to pass more times than she can count, but now that it's arrived she doesn't believe it. She _can't_ believe it, the woman on the bridge and the helicarrier and dragging her out of the water hadn't known her, and thus there's still a very large part of her that doesn't trust her memories. It's the same part that wakes up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night because what if the Winter Soldier was more manipulation, what if they'd hijacked her head, what if she saw Lexa when what was really there was just another HYDRA goon. She'd spent every waking moment since she'd woken from the ice with the creeping paranoia that one day she'd open her eyes to 1943, to Dante Wallace and a raging war. Now, she's spent five months chasing an apparition, terrified that, the second she manages to lay a hand on her waking ghost, Lexa will slip from her fingers and she'll wake up tied down to a surgical chair, with Cage Wallace looming large over her, and none of this will be real.

"Griffin, did you hear me?"

"Sorry, could you repeat that?"

"Jaha wants you to come in."

\--

The next hour is a blur of armoured cars, security gates and retinal scans, and then her palms are pressed up against the inch of glass that separates her from the woman that looks so much like her Lexa, right down to the scar slicing across the point of her chin.

She's strapped onto a surgical chair, teeth gritted, drenched in sweat as she strains against her bonds. The muscles in her neck are taut, and she whips her head from side to side as best she can in a fruitless attempt to free herself. Even through the supposedly soundproof window, Clarke can still hear broken screams.

She feels Jaha at her shoulder before she sees him, and where Anya raises a hand in greeting Clarke keeps her fists clenched by her sides, her whole body tense, stored anger about to spring free.

"What have you done to her?" she spits, eyes tracing Lexa's convulsing form, something gripping her stomach tight, making her sick at the sight. She's never, _ever_ seen Lexa look this weak or this tiny, like if she broke free of her bonds and curled in on herself she'd disappear. Not in the early days in Washington, not as Callaghan on the front lines, and never as the lethal Winter Soldier. This is all too new to Clarke, but it doesn't take her long to learn that she despises seeing her best friend this helpless and broken.

"This wasn't us." Jaha doesn't even blink under the weight of her glare. "We loaded her up with enough tranquilizers to knock out the Hulk, but they didn't have any effect, and then the second we attempted to put her in the chair she started lashing out at our troops.

"Then why do you still have her strapped down to it? She's going to hurt herself."

"Better her than someone on our payroll. She put an agent in the hospital ward when she gave herself up, and another seven once we got her in here. She's too big of a danger to our staff loose, at least until we come up with a plan of attack."

"Don't you think," she growls, "that maybe there's a _reason_ for that? Do you know what HYDRA labs look like, Jaha? Because I do, and Lexa sure as hell does, and you can't expect her to surrender to us and then be okay getting locked up in a room that's almost an exact replica of the places she's been tortured for seventy years. No wonder she lashed out!"

"Need I remind you that that's the Winter Soldier in there, Captain? Forgive me if we don't cater to her every need while we hold her in custody."

"She _surrendered_ to us, to SHIELD. I'd sure as hell hope that deserved something better than this treatment."

"We are deliberating how to handle this situation, Clarke. When we come to an agreement, you will be informed.

She opens her mouth, fully prepared to unleash a tirade on him, but Raven comes out of nowhere, her latest knee brace absent the repetitive click that had previously tended to herald her arrival. The engineer hooks her arm through Clarke's with a grin. "Hey, 'Loni, mind if I borrow Cap for a little bit?" Jaha moves to protest, but Raven has already tugged her from the window.

She lets the engineer pull her away from Jaha and Anya, her eyes staying on Lexa's prone body as Raven tries to clear a path through a group of nervous field agents clustered at the side of the room. "Come on, people, move out of the way. America's sweetheart coming through, and Captain America is with me."

If it were any other day, Clarke would have knocked shoulders with her and groaned at the familiar joke. Instead, she stays silent, stares blankly ahead. After all, if it were any other day Raven wouldn't be dragging her upstairs to the relative privacy of the gallery overlooking the lab with pity all over her face and a nightmare tableau laid out below them.

"How long?" The question slips out unbidden, an unconscious attempt to distract herself from the SHIELD doctors gathering around Lexa and inserting new lines. The fight leaches out of her body as Clarke watches, and her head lolls back against the headrest.

"STRIKE Team Alpha was called out at 0300; they brought her back in forty-five minutes later."

"She was close, then."

"Pretty much right on the front doorstep."

"Odd," she comments absently.

"Suspicious, more like," and Clarke's head snaps up.

"What exactly are you implying?" she forces out through gritted teeth, her shoulders tensing.

"You have to wonder why she gave herself up, Clarke." Raven works her jaw as she surveys the unconscious prisoner. Her words are direct, and sharp enough they make Clarke want to draw a knife and cut back. She's got enough psychological artillery to use against the engineer, after all. “The psychologists I spoke to have every reason to believe that she’s still operating under HYDRA programming, and I think you might want to keep that in mind."

"She surrendered herself willingly," she counters, but the words sound weak even to her. It's the first thing that had come to mind when Anya had stood up from her couch, and it makes altogether too much sense.

"She may have, but it makes no difference to Jaha. She's a threat to SHIELD, she's a HYDRA asset, and he's not going to stop treating her as such anytime soon."

Clarke nods and gives Raven a tight smile. "Well, at least right now I'm not so much frustrated with him as just happy she's here."

She smirks, and then leans down to fiddle with her brace. "Oh, give it about twenty minutes, yeah?"

"Yeah, sounds about right."

Raven pats her on the shoulder and heads towards the door before stopping in her tracks. She looks back over her shoulder, her face serious. "Clarke, be sure you remember who it actually is down there, okay? She's not Lexa anymore. You understand that, right?"

"Sure."

"Good."

She spares a glare for Raven's retreating form before standing at parade rest, tears pricking the corners of her eyes. She sniffs them back sharply and lets her gaze fall back to Lexa.

It's her stillness that slams like a fist into Clarke's gut, that makes the blows hit home. Now she's motionless and Clarke's alone with time to survey her, the truth almost takes her legs out from under her. She had left her behind because there was no way anyone could have survived that, there was no chance there'd be a body to find, she'd fallen a thousand feet and Clarke had lunged forward for her hand and had seen terror in Lexa's eyes for the first time in her life as she'd tumbled backwards off the train, taking Clarke's heart with her. She had left her to plummet to the earth, Icarus flying too close to the sun, to lie broken and bleeding in the ice and snow, battered and bloody but still _alive_.

And Clarke had _left her_.


	3. Chapter 3

**September 7, 2014**

\--

It's when she's standing watching the doctors flitting around Lexa that Clarke realizes that she can't distinctly remember Lexa before the war. Lexa before HYDRA, Lexa before Tsing, Lexa before injections and torture and hurt. The girl she knew in Washington, with scraped knees and bird-like limbs, with a grin on her face and a kid sister on her hip, blends in with recollections tainted by blood and ashes, by a soldier falling to her death and a berserker throwing a fist at her head.

She peels away from the window and bends over, covers her eyes with her hands, frightened that watching any longer will just allow more and more of the child to vanish from her head. The idea hits her full force, and she buckles further, one arm clutching at her stomach, then rises, strong, tall, resolute.

Her feet take her through the compound of their own accord, and she finds herself standing beside a couch in the sprawling rec room. “The mind control that you used on us,” she begins slowly, holding perfect posture as she waits for the slumped figure to glance up at her.

“What about it?” Bellamy sets aside the sheaf of paper and sits up, crossing his legs on the couch in front of him.

"Could you…" she swallows thickly. "You made me see Niylah, like she was back then, to throw me off." Bellamy nods slowly, his face paling; the topic is still a sore point amongst some of the Avengers, and Clarke knows he's faced some blowback despite them now being on the same team. "I was wondering if you could show me Lexa… In the present, how she'd be now if she wasn't the Soldier."

His head snaps up, and he stares at her, wide-eyed. "Captain-"

She crosses her arms, shifts her weight to one foot. "I know what I'm asking, Bellamy."

His fingers tap a rhythm out on his kneecap, and he gulps. "Clarke, there are consequences to this that I am not sure you have considered. I am going to be digging through your head, and I have no guarantees that you are going to want to come back to the present after what I show you. It might feel like torture to wake up."

"I've thought this through, and it's the right decision. There's no reason for me not to do this. _Please._ "

"As long as you are sure."

She settles stiffly beside him on the couch. "I'm confident that this is what I want, what I _need._ "

"Alright, then, let us get started."

\--

_Lexa's fingers trace the curve of Clarke's cheek, her mouth twitching into a smile even as Clarke flings a hand out and keeps her eyes glued shut. "Too early," she mumbles, burying her face in her pillow, and Lexa rolls her eyes, slides her hand up the back of Clarke's loose tank top, flattens the cool metal of her palm against the dip between her shoulder blades. "You're not playing fair," Clarke complains, turning her head just enough to glare at the brunette through one eye. "Stop," she whines as Lexa trails her fingertips down the curve of her spine._

_"Make me," Lexa replies, shit-eating grin and all, and she doesn't have time to react before Clarke has her pinned down on her back. Her knees bracket Lexa's hips and she gathers her hair back behind one shoulder and then dips to press a quick peck to the tip of the brunette's nose._

_"It's not even six, Lex," she mumbles, with a nip at a pale shoulder. "Why are you up so early?"_

_She smirks, arm looping around Clarke's waist and tugging her down. "You think too loudly."_

_Clarke grounds her elbows on either side of Lexa's head and sticks her bottom lip out. "I wasn't even awake, how could I have woken you?"_

_Lexa bites at Clarke's lip, then slides her hands up Clarke's sides, dipping under the hem of her loose tank top. The brunette grins widely when Clarke shivers at the touch, and she tucks the smile away in the back of her head, saving it for later though she's not quite sure why. "Because I can't sleep when I know your brain's going a mile a minute."_

_"I was having a bad dream." Clarke drops her head against Lexa's shoulder, and Lexa pulls her tight against her chest. The brunette's heartbeat pounds through her head, grounds her._

_"What was it?"_

_She blushes, pressing her face into the plane of Lexa's shoulder. "You didn't know who I am," she mutters into the warmth. "Who you are."_

_Lexa slips her hand under Clarke's chin, the metal sliding easily against her skin, and tips her head up so their eyes meet. "You're Clarke, and I'm Lexa, and it's 2015. We're both here, we're both safe."_

_"I know that_ now _," Clarke says, rolling her eyes as she presses a kiss to the curve of Lexa's jaw in thanks, though there's a twinge at the base of her skull that says Lexa's words are the opposite of the truth. She sits back on her heels and tugs at the front of the Lexa's shirt until she sits up. "Come on, you know the drill."_

_"I made breakfast last time," Lexa groans, but, despite her complaints, she still moves to the edge of the bed and lets Clarke loop her legs around her waist and her arms around her neck before piggybacking her out of the bedroom. "I thought you were smaller," she quips, pretending to stagger beneath Clarke's weight._

_"Rude." Clarke slips from her back and jumps up to take a seat on the edge of the kitchen counter. "Just for that, I expect a full spread, none of that yogurt and muesli crap like last time. I'm a growing girl."_

_"You're ninety-five, Clarke."_

_"A_ young _ninety-five," she pouts, crossing her arms, and Lexa turns to kiss her softly._

_"I'll give you that one." She pulls a frying pan from the cabinet next to Clarke and sets it on the stove. "You totally only look about ninety-four."_

_"Jerk." Clarke tangles her fingers in the folds of Lexa's sleeve, pulls her into the space between her thighs and wraps her legs around the brunette's slim waist._

_"Punk." Lexa leans forward, metal hand on the countertop to hold herself stable as she presses her lips to Clarke's and tangles her other hand in blonde hair-_

\--

Her head rests in Bellamy's lap, his palms pressed gently into her hair, fingertips on her neck. She stirs awake when the tingling in her temples fades, blinks a few times, and glances up at him with hooded eyes. She tries to no avail to ignore the ache burrowing into the pit of her stomach, but the emptiness takes over.

"We still have a bit more time before briefing," he rasps, his slim pianist’s fingers carding through her hair, patiently working out tangles. There's practice in his movements, however rusty they may be, and she can't help but imagine that he used to do this regularly, before Ultron. "If you wanted to go under again, I mean."

She shakes her head, rubs her hand softly against his knee as the streak of blue, all pumping arms and cocky grin, flashes through her mind. "I wish I could do this for you."

"No," he says. His tears land hot on her skin, but he's able to school his expression, to keep his face free of emotion. "No, you do not."

"Bell-"

"Leave it, Captain." He shifts out from beneath her and grabs a sweater from the back of the couch, pulls it over his head and smoothes it down against his chest. "I will see you at the briefing."

\--

She's bracketed by Anya and Monty the moment she takes a seat in the conference room. Anya rubs Clarke's back for a moment in sympathy before turning her chair to face Jaha, and Monty pats her thigh as he leans in towards her.

"At least we don't have to run around the globe playing detectives anymore," Monty comments, swallowing back a yawn.

"Oh, but rural Eastern Europe is so nice in the fall. All that… countryside." She gives him a wry grin that he returns in full.

"The _cows_ ," he mutters darkly, and a wide smile spreads across her face at the memory.

"I'm never going to let you live that one down."

"Don't I know it," he replies with a grimace. "It'll be good to be back in our own beds, though."

"That's for sure." Clarke looks up and away from Monty as the door is thrown open. Raven swaggers in (more _attempts_ to; Clarke's certain no one's mentioned to her that it's much less effective now that she requires the knee brace to walk), slipping off her sunglasses and sprawling in the chair opposite Clarke. "You still think fashionably late is appropriate, I see," she comments.

"What's your problem?" Raven glances at her watch. "Oh, it's after five, is it past your bedtime?"

"Really, Reyes? You need to find some new material, this stuff is almost as old as I am."

Raven readies a retort, but she's interrupted by the a wide-eyed intern clearing his throat. He taps the tip of his pen on his clipboard. "Does anyone have, uhm," he stutters, staring around the table at the cast of heroes, "does anyone have drink orders?"

Raven looks up from her tablet, a smirk flickering across her face as she stares straight across the table at Clarke. "Griffin, you'll have an iced cap, right?"

Monty snorts at her side, then covers his mouth quickly, looking shocked that he'd let the sound out. Clarke rolls her eyes before turning to smile gently at the jumpy intern. "I'll just have a black coffee, thanks." The rest of the team reels off their orders, and as the intern makes his way from the room, Jaha strides through the door.

He sets a stack of file folders down at the head of the table and leans over them, looking slowly from face to face. "As you all have been made aware, Alexandra Callaghan, code name Winter Soldier, was taken into SHIELD custody early this morning."

"Surrendered," Clarke mutters, leaning forward and swiping a folder from the stack. Jaha eyes her contemptuously, a sneer flashing across his face.

"Commander Kane and I have spent the past few hours discussing how we feel that this HYDRA agent should be dealt with. As most of you know, the asset has two dozen confirmed assassinations over the last sixty years. Earlier this year, her missions including high ranking members of SHIELD's staff, but, due to quick action, these attempts failed." Anya's fist presses against the side of Clarke's thigh, and she covers it with her own hand. Beyond those who had been present during Lexa's attacks, none of the others in the room as yet had knowledge that it was the pair of them who had been targeted, and she was surprisingly glad that it seemed Jaha intended to keep it that way. "As such, we have deemed her an appropriate choice for addition into Project Occlusion."

Raven sets down her tablet and glances sideways at Jaha. "I'm assuming we don't have the clearance levels to be privy to the details of this project, so can I ask why the hell we're here?"

"The Avengers will use any information obtained through this project to hunt down the final heads of HYDRA." He slides the stack of folders forward and splays them across the table. Clarke watches his movements closely, the implications of his wording quickly becoming clear. She taps Monty and Anya on the knee and boots Raven in the shin, her heart leaping into her throat when Jaha directs a weighted look towards her, but his gaze passes quickly and she breathes a sigh at the temporary relief before steeling herself.

Clarke stands and wedges her folder under her arm, trying her best to keep a straight face. "I'm going to take this and do some light bedtime reading," she comments with a wave at Jaha. "After all, as Reyes enjoys pointing out, I _am_ elderly, and it's long past my bedtime." She walks from the room calmly, head held high, but as soon as the door clicks shut behind her, she turns and does the only thing she can think to do.

She runs.


	4. Chapter 4

**September 7, 2014**

\--

Clarke charges through the halls, a battering ram of pumping limbs as she darts past room after room. The first lab she finds empty she breaks into, cracking the lock easily with a well-placed fist and slipping inside. She slaps the file down on the desk and boots up the computer, her hands shaking uncontrollably as she stumbles into the rolling chair and sends herself spinning across the floor.

Clarke drags the chair back to the desk and leans her elbows on the lip of the tabletop as she waits for the desktop to boot up. She peruses the keyboard and then pecks carefully at the keys, one finger at a time.

_Project Occlusion_

_Search results: 0_

She pounds frustratedly at the backspace key, her brow furrowing.

_Winter Soldier_

_Search results: 0_

Clarke leans back in her chair and lets out a sharp laugh. She knows for a fact that there are at least two reports she's submitted in which she'd used the term in lieu of having to go through the pain of typing out Lexa's name. She can understand the project not being easy to access, but the _code name_ not showing up? That does far too much to support a fear of psychosis for her sanity's sake.

_Lexa Callaghan_

_Search results: 0_

"Honestly, I don't know what I expected." She slams her palms down on the keyboard and lets her head fall.

"I'm just surprised you even know how to use a computer," a voice quips from behind her. She finds Raven grinning smugly at her when she turns. "And you're not gonna find shit searching from a low level access terminal." Her smile disappears when she glances past Clarke at the computer screen. "But what you _are_ gonna do is set off an alarm by trying to look up a restricted project from a Level Three workspace. Dumbass."

"I didn't-"

Raven limps forward and pushes her chair aside, and as Clarke rolls backwards she notices Monty still standing outside, glancing nervously up and down the hallway. "You broke into a SHIELD lab, Captain. Which, from experience, sets off quite a few red alerts upstairs. Not even considering the fact you're digging into shit the Colonel wants you to know as little as possible about. You're just lucky Anya stayed upstairs to work Jaha."

Bellamy pokes his head around the doorframe, red sparks licking over the hand that rests on the doorjamb. "Do you have a plan?"

"A plan for what?" She asks, playing dumb, gnawing at her lip and avoiding Raven's attempt at making eye contact. She slides the file folder off the desk and tucks it up under her arm before straightening her shoulders and taking a deep breath.

Raven steps forward, crossing her arms and arching her eyebrow. "Seriously?"

"What?"

"You _are_ the Star-Spangled Man with a Plan. Or woman. Whatever. We're not stupid, Captain."

"I never said you were."

"You sure as hell just implied it," Raven growls.

" _Hey_ ," Monty interjects, stepping between them and pushing them softly apart. "Now's not the time. Anya's only going to be able to stall Jaha for so long now you've gone and set the alarms off. We need to get the Soldier, and we need to get out."

"How'd you-"

He grins. "Like Raven said, we're not _completely_ stupid."

She nods sharply, turning out into the hall as she loosens her shield on her back. "Alright, we've got about two minutes max before we're up to our eyeballs in Strike Team One. Reyes, we're going to need transport once we've broken her out. Find it. Monty, eyes in the sky for her, please. Blake, you're with me. Stay off comms, we don't know who's listening in. Get to the bridge, and, if we're not there in seven and a half, get out."

"Minutes or hours?"

She rolls her eyes and sighs heavily. "Reyes, _go_."

"Aye aye, Captain," Raven shouts back, and then they disappear down a side hallway.

Clarke whirls and sprints in the opposite direction, only glancing back once to be sure Bellamy follows her before setting her sights on the staircase at the end of the hall. She rips the door open and swings herself over the railing, dropping down the empty hollow in the centre of the stairs. She curls herself into a ball against her shield, gritting her teeth as she braces for impact.

The fall jars her momentarily, and she climbs woozily back to her feet and staggers forward a few steps before she's able to compose herself. She straightens up and adjusts the collar of her stealth suit, then plasters a smile on her face as she enters the annex of the intake lab, her heart in her throat.

"Afternoon, agents."

"You're under arrest, Griffin," one of the agents replies, his voice shaking as Clarke stares right down the barrel of his gun. "Colonel's orders."

"I'm sorry, Captain," the other says, and when she looks over there are tears welling in the corners of his eyes.

"Not as sorry as I am."

She shifts easily into motion, darting forward and kicking the first agent's wrist, knocking his pistol free from his grasp. In the same movement, she slams the lip of her shield into the agent's neck and slides forward beneath the second agent's outstretched arm. Clarke pops back to her feet, pins the man's arm between her elbow and her side and twists. She drives her other forearm into the man's triceps, smiling grimly at the satisfying crunch that resounds from his shoulder, and then smashes her shield into his chin. He slides from her grasp and falls to the floor, limp.

Bellamy bursts into the room just as the agent hits the ground and bends over with his hands on his knees, breathing heavily. "Could not have saved one for me?" he quips, glancing around the room as he straightens up.

"Shut it, Blake," Clarke growls, advancing swiftly towards the double doors to the lab. She cracks one door open and slides inside, hiding behind her shield as she scans the room and then snapping it onto the magnetic clasps on her back when she finds it empty of agents. "All clear!" She rushes forward to Lexa, still strapped tight to the surgical chair, still unconscious, still _tiny_ , and strokes a few strands of hair back from her flushed face. "Hey, jerk," she whispers with a sad smile, tracing the angle of Lexa's jaw with the tip of her thumb. "Good to see you."

Bellamy clears his throat uncomfortably and reaches across the chair to tug on her sleeve. "Captain, we need to be moving."

Her head jerks up, and she nods quickly. "Right. Yeah. Okay. I need you to keep her under." She traces down the IV and tears off the tape before sliding the needle free from the crook of her elbow.

He unclips the strap at Lexa's hips. "I can manage that."

Clarke softly tugs the bindings off of her forehead. "For an undefined amount of time, though?"

"For however long you need." He bends over her feet, prying the straps around her ankles loose. "They have her so drugged that I probably will not even need to do much to keep her down."

"Don't remind me." Clarke pulls the last straps on Lexa's torso free of their buckles and lets her fingertips drift across the soldier's collarbone before shifting to pull her up over her shoulder in a fireman's carry. "Let's go."

There's a clattering from out in the annex, and Clarke stiffens. Bellamy pads across to the door, sparks flickering up around his hands. He peers through the window and then throws the door open wildly. Anya slides around the corner, her face grim and blood streaked down her cheek. "Judging by the agents out there, you already know this, but Jaha's been alerted. He's activated the strike team. We need to leave _now_."

"Okay. Blake, you take Lexa to the bridge. Volkoff and I will be right behind you."

Bellamy grabs her shoulder roughly. "I am not leaving her here," he spits, his fingers digging into her skin.

"I didn't expect you to. We're getting her next."

"They're going to send guards down here for the Soldier first, anyway," Anya chips in. "So we shouldn't have to fight as many agents on our way out."

"Knock on wood," Clarke growls, tugging Lexa's arm further over her shoulder. "We're not safe yet."

"I am coming with you."

"No. We don't have time to argue, we need you with Lexa."

Bellamy shakes his head vehemently and crosses his arms. "I am not leaving this building without her by my side."

"Fine. We've got three and a half minutes. Let's get a move on."

The trek two flights of stairs up to the hospital ward kills twenty-five seconds, and they stand face-to-face with a locked and deserted hospital ward. Clarke hefts Lexa higher on her shoulder and nods towards the unit. "We can't take her in there. It'd be too much to deal with if we got attacked. Blake, you'll-" Bellamy raises an eyebrow and she clears her throat. "You'll go in with Volkoff."

He nods, mouthing 'thank you' at her. "I should still be able to hold her unconscious from inside."

"Ten-four." She sinks to one knee and lowers Lexa off her shoulder to the floor as Bellamy and Anya head past her.

The pair breaks through the heavy security of the hospital wing in record time. She's come home to the Russian sprawled on her couch with a bowlful of cereal and a record playing often enough to know she's pretty adept at the lock-picking facet of her trade, and adding the weak reality altering energy that leaked from Bellamy gave Anya the last edge she needed to crash the SHIELD system.

She has to work hard to keep from idly tangling her free hand in Lexa's loosely braided hair as she tries not to eavesdrop on the whispered conversation between the two Avengers as they get to work. The soldier's face is slack, peaceful for the first time Clarke has seen her in years as her cheek rests against Clarke's thigh. Clarke rubs circles lightly between Lexa's shoulder blades and a sigh drifts from the brunette's lips, closely followed by a soft click from down the hall.

Clarke is on her feet in an instant, tearing the shield from her back and snapping it onto her forearm as she stares down the empty hall. "Guys," she calls out softly, balling her hand into a fist. "We may have a situation."

"Ditto!" Bellamy's voice is strained, raising Clarke's hackles. She flips quickly through the floorplan in the back of her head and curses under her breath. In the pair's haste, they might have forgotten to check the back entrance. Her fear is confirmed by a crash echoing from inside the ward.

She glances down at Lexa, breathing easier when she sees the soldier is still unconscious, before peering down the hall towards the source of the click. The overhead lights glint off the tip of a gun barrel peeking around the doorway from the staircase, followed closely by a man in full combat gear.

She cocks her arm back, then saucers her shield full force down the hall at him once he rounds the corner. The rim clips the chin of his helmet, knocking it free of his head and sending him reeling back. Clarke doesn't stray from Lexa's side as she clicks the button on the cuff of her glove to retrieve her shield, and resumes her defensive posture while the agent regains his feet.

"I just want you to know, Cap, this isn't personal." Murphy smirks at her and raises his gun. The weapon is eerily familiar, tugging half-forgotten memories loose from the filing cabinets in her head, but she shoves the thought aside and raises her shield. Murphy fires, and she holds firm and deflects the bullet.

"Kinda feels that way, John," she comments as he approaches, gun still leveled at her. She shifts slightly until she's stationed in front of Lexa, the soldier's arm pressed firmly against the back of her calves.

"Come in now and no one else has to get hurt."

Her head snaps up at his comment, her eyes widening slightly. "Am I to infer you've hurt someone?"

He opens his mouth to respond, but he's interrupted as Anya's shout comes clear through the walls of the hospital ward. "Let's go, Blake!" It's followed by a loud thud, and an even louder curse, and then a spattering of gunfire. Clarke almost jumps out of her skin when there's movement against her ankle.

Lexa rises unsteadily to one knee and then pushes up to her feet, her eyes flickering around the hallway. Murphy pales and the hand holding the gun wavers momentarily before he reaches under his jacket and pulls another pistol from his shoulder holster. He levels it at Lexa. "Stand down, soldier."

Lexa rubs at the hollow of her elbow, eyes focused on Murphy, but then Clarke shifts the position of her shield to match Murphy's gun, and she turns on her heel. Her gaze pierces straight through Clarke, her body stiffening as she works her jaw, and Clarke almost doesn't recognize her behind the feral slant of her mouth and the dead eyes.

"Lexa..." she murmurs, holding a cautious hand out between them.

"You're my... mission," she states, slow and careful, her face brightening when she seems to get it right, before dropping back to storm. "You're my mission," she repeats, her voice rough with disuse.

" _Lex_ ," Clarke begs, taking a small step towards the brunette, the dead eyes following her every motion. She's distracted enough trying to find a smidgen of Lexa hidden in her glassy pupils that she doesn't register that the soldier is moving until the fist shatters her nose.

Pure reflex is the only thing that saves her life. Clarke swings her shield around just in time to block a second punch from the metal arm. The impact still sends her staggering back, blood droplets scattering across the tiled floor as hot iron drips down the back of her throat. She spits a mouthful of blood to the side and straightens up, keeping her shield between the pair of them.

"Lexa, you know me. I'm your friend." The soldier darts forward, close enough to land a blow around the edge of Clarke's shield. Her knuckles smash into Clarke's cheek, and Clarke hooks her leg around Lexa's knee, dropping her to the tile floor. "I'm your _friend_."

Lexa rips the shield free of her arm and flings it aside, then torques her hips, and the next thing Clarke knows Lexa's flipped them over. She blocks the metal fist aimed for her torso with her forearm, then wraps her hand tight around Lexa's wrist, pushing her arm away.

"You're my _mission_ ," Lexa spits, wrenching her arm free from Clarke's grasp and landing a punch to her kidney. Clarke inhales sharply, pain shooting up her side, and shoots her fist up, hitting Lexa in the chin and knocking her back. She scrambles to her feet and backs away from Lexa as the soldier raises her fists and steps forward. " _You're_. _My_. _Mission_." Her words are punctuated by swings at Clarke's chest and head.

She dodges the punches, her hands by her sides. "You know me, Lex. We grew up together. Come _on_."

Lexa kicks her leg out, forcing her to dart backwards in order to stay upright. The motion brings her closer to Murphy, and she can see him readying himself out of the corner of her eye, itching to pull a trigger. She swings her elbow his way, catching him in the jaw and knocking him out cold, then kicks his pistols down the hall before looking up at Lexa.

"Lex, you know me. We grew up together, we fought together. I _lost_ you." She takes a step towards Lexa when she notices the confusion curling the brunette's lip. "You're Lexa Callaghan, we grew up in Washington and fought in France and I lost you in Germany."

"I lost you first."

The flash of clarity is brief and startling, and Clarke's breath goes sour in her mouth. Then Lexa is lunging forward and wrapping her arms around Clarke's waist, tackling her to the floor. The contact sends Clarke's head whipping back, and her skull slams into the tiles, setting off fireworks behind her eyelids and knocking the breath right out of her. She gasps for air and grabs at Lexa's hips, tries to twist her off, but the soldier doesn't budge, just reaches past her flailing arms, wraps her hands tight around Clarke's neck and drives her thumbs into Clarke's trachea. The edges of her vision are tinged with black.

The hallway explodes around her.


	5. Chapter 5

_It's Jasper that brings Anya in, the archer making a call that Kane has little faith in, but he hasn't been wrong before and so Kane trusts his instincts. Initially he increases patrols and STRIKE Team Alpha remains on tenterhooks, waiting for something to give, for someone to snap._

_They don't realize exactly who she is at first, the double agent, the Russian mirage, a storm of aliases and disguises. She's the Black Widow, the woman with a thousand names and no solid backstory. Anna, Anastasia, Anatolia. St. Petersburg, Prague, Paris. It takes an encounter with Clarke in the first week after she comes out of the ice to place her accurately, and the super soldier finds in Antalya Volkov a kindred spirit, a wartime mirror. Her Soviet counterpart, both genetically modified to suit their countries' needs without regard for the consequences._

_They'd met once, briefly, during the war, running into each other in a darkened hallway in the centre of a HYDRA facility before heading their separate ways, both on missions central to the Allied cause. That was where their similarities had begun and ended. Where Anya had lived through wars, invasions, peace and chaos, Clarke had missed the massive cultural shifts, had been cast adrift, out of time._

_They're in each other's orbits when they halt Loki in his track, but it takes a foray into Central America for them to warm up to each other completely. They're two sides of the same coin, of a currency currently in high demand with Special Ops, and as such their methods tend to vary. It's Clarke that talks Anya down when she holds a pistol to the head of an innocent, Clarke that pulls her back from the brink when she threatens to go rogue, Clarke that neutralizes the target and gets them both home safe and sound._

_And then it's Anya who steps up when it's revealed that her protégée and Clarke's history are one and the same._

\--

**September 7, 2014**

\--

A drum line pounds away in Clarke's head, and her vision is blurred when she cracks her eyes open, her pupils blown wide. The streak of red looming over her coalesces into glimmering metal, and Raven reaches up an armoured hand to push open her face plate. "Captain."

"Subtle entrance," she comments between shuddering inhalations. Lexa's dead weight is sprawled across her abdomen, and she writhes awkwardly in an attempt to slide free before Raven takes pity on her and lifts the soldier's body.

"You have to admit, it _was_ pretty lowkey for me," she laughs as she drops Lexa heavily beside Clarke and sinks into a crouch.

"Thanks for following my orders, by the way, really appreciate it."

"Thanks for saving your ass, more like." She nudges Lexa's shoulder with the toe of her boot, the brunette's head rolling to the side. "Do we _really_ have to take her? It'd be much easier on all of us is I just put her out of her misery," she muses, aiming her palm repulsor at Lexa's temple.

"You do that, and you'll be dead before the blast hits her skull." Clarke plants her fist on the ground and shoves herself up on one knee. She pauses, breathing heavily, focuses on scanning the hall. Raven hadn't found any of the ground level entrances to be acceptable, if the hole blown in the side of the building is anything to go by. Murphy lies a couple feet away from her, and she's momentarily positive her blow had killed him, before she notices the condensation when his breath meets the frozen air.

"Where're the others? You guys not picked her up yet?"

"Getting to it. Blake and Volk-" Clarke spots movement in her peripheral, and her head snaps around, finding the Russian picking her way through the debris and out of the hospital ward. "Anya?"

"They overpowered us," she grates out through gritted teeth as she cradles her arm to her body, a shard of bone peeking out through a gash in her sleeve. "Got the jump on Bell, came at me once they got him down. We need to get gone before they come back with reinforcements."

"Do we have transport, Reyes?"

Raven holds a hand out to Clarke and pulls her to her feet. "Of course, have you no faith in me? Monty's got a Quinjet right outside this very conveniently placed hole in the wall."

\--

The minutes it takes them to get clear of SHIELD airspace are wrought with uncomfortable silence, as Raven entrenches herself behind the controls and the rest of the team attempts to gather their wits about them. It's the engineer, still in full armour, who speaks first. "Where the hell are we supposed to go?" She fiddles with her headset, muttering to herself under her breath as the rest of them exchange shrugs. "So, Cap, you’ve made us fugitives for a phantom without even considering what we're gonna do?"

"I didn’t force any of you to do this." Raven snorts loudly before shaking her head, and Clarke glares at her. "What? I didn’t."

"You kind of did," Monty says softly, patting her leg for a moment before raising his hand to his face. His cheek is smeared with ash, and when he rubs at it he only manages to spread it further. "Not that I wouldn’t have joined you anyway, but you really didn’t give any of us a choice in the matter."

"You could have stayed with SHIELD."

"Your actions in the conference room most likely implied to Jaha that we were accomplices to your decisions. You forced our hands, Clarke." Anya is seated with her broken arm in the Cradle, her free hand dancing over her belt, cataloging equipment as she keeps her eyes fixed on the bodies laid out in the cargo bay. "I would be here regardless, but we didn't exactly have an out."

"Are you guys finished with making it clear that I'm a horrible and manipulative person yet?"

"I can take a break from it, if only to ask _someone_ to give me a location where SHIELD won't find us. Anyone? Anyone?" She shoves back from the controls and sighs. "Bueller?"

Monty fiddles with his harness, then stands and moves towards the cockpit. "Jasper's going to kill me for this, but I know a place."

"You think he'd be okay with us staying at his farm again?"

He swallows heavily. "Uhm, it's even worse than that."

"Alright, step on up kid." Raven shifts to the side to give him access to the control panels. "I for one am always down for crashing one of Legolas' little hidey-holes."

As the pair get to work, voices rising in excitement, Clarke makes her way towards the back of the plane. She forces her eyes to skip over the three unconscious forms and instead rests her hip against the side of the Cradle, watching in fascination as Anya's exposed bone disappears beneath pale skin.

After a moment, Clarke glances towards the cockpit, where Monty and Raven now have their heads together, deeply engrossed in a discussion about disabling the jet's tracking system, and then leans forward. "You said the agents overpowered you?" she asks, voice low. Anya nods sharply. "Blake didn’t have much trouble with the Ultron droids-"

"They were powered," Anya interjects softly as the machine finishes knitting her skin back together. She pulls her arm free and works her hand, clenching and extending her fingers. "High level, too, and trained. But I didn’t recognize any of them, not their faces, not their skillsets. They weren't indexed."

"How many?"

"Five."

Clarke tenses, her hands automatically going for the shield strapped to her back. "In SHIELD uniform?"

"All of them." Anya glances towards the cargo bay and purses her lips. "He was distracted, probably thought they were just agents. They knocked him out before he could make a move."

"So that's how she woke up," she muses, fingers tapping against the surface of the Cradle, and Anya raises an eyebrow. "Lexa interrupted my fight with Murphy."

"Not in a good way, if the bruising on your neck is anything to go by."

"She came after me, probably would've knocked me out if Raven hadn't shown up when she did. But it's fine, I'm fine."

"It's not fine, Clarke. She attacked you again. You can't forget that she was already sent to kill us once."

"She didn’t know what was happening. She woke up in a battleground; instinct is to fight. I don't blame her, it's not her fault."

"She'd have killed you if Raven had followed your orders "

"But she didn't."

"She had her hands around your throat."

"She didn't _know_." Clarke's hands tighten around the rim of the pod, knuckles blanching.

"You're right. She didn't know you. And she doesn't now. Nothing's changed overnight. She's not Lexa Callaghan, not now, and probably not ever."

"I lost her once already, I don't intend to do so again. Some part of her knows me, it has to."

Anya reaches out a tentative hand and then lets it fall away. "I just don't want you to get your hopes up, alright? That girl there, she's not the one you knew, she's not even the one I knew, and there's no guarantee that's ever going to change."

"I can't give up on her, not if there's any chance at all that I can get her back."

\--

 

_After the fall, Clarke loses herself in the dingy corner of a dirty bar, knocking back shots of cheap vodka that burn their way down her throat but do nothing for her head._

_She loses herself in bed with Niylah, all sharp teeth and grabbing hands. It's quick, violent, over. Niylah rolls away and rises, gathers her clothing, slips from the room with a few mumbled words. She remains on her back, stiff and unyielding, and the tears still won't come._

_She loses herself behind the controls of a plane with a hollow heart and a readiness to go down in flames. Niylah's choked pleas rattle over a shoddy radio connection, and she spits back a mouthful of promises she intends to break._

_She loses herself drowning behind a shattered windshield, cold seeping through her jacket and leaching right into her bones. Her lungs filling with ice and her head finally, thankfully, empty._

 


	6. Chapter 6

**April 3, 2014**

\--

_Her mouth tastes of ash and blood and deceit, and the edge of the table cracks beneath her fingers. "You could have warned me."_

_"Look, I didn't know about Callaghan."_

_"Even if you had, would you have told me? Or would you have compartmentalized that, too?"_

_Jaha ignores the question and crosses the room from his position at the window. "It's called conditioning," he states, matter of fact, leaning on the table next to Clarke's seat. "They starved her, dehydrated her, tortured her. She's not the same girl you knew."_

_Clarke can't, won't, believe that. Despite the pistol aimed at her head and the hand clenched around her throat, there had been familiarity buried behind the streaks of greasepaint and hollow eyes. "Lexa is still in there somewhere."_

_"Lexa Callaghan is gone, Captain, and the Winter Soldier is a threat that needs to be dealt with appropriately. I trust you'll follow orders?"_

\--

**September 7, 2014**

\--

Raven grins when she cracks open the door to the weathered garage. As far as she can tell at first glance, it's well stocked with the tools she'll need to fix up the damage caused to her suit in the escape, and the thought of buckling down and doing a mechanic's work again makes her smile spread even wider.

She's bent over a work table fiddling with one of her repulsors when she hears the door open behind her. The silent steps are telling, and without looking up she says "Volkoff."

"Reyes."

She's still wary around the Russian, (after all, the woman played her like a fool and easily found her way into her head and into her bed), but comfortable enough that she's fine keeping her hands busy working away at her tech, (as the odds of Anya attacking her are pretty slim (she hopes)). "Come to see the master at work?"

"Something like that." Anya boosts herself onto the hood of the rusted-out car that inhabits half of the garage and hugs a knee to her chest. "How'd you damage it?"

Raven pulls free the screwdriver she'd had clenched momentarily between her teeth. "Took some fire boosting the Quinjet. Agents are assigned more powerful weapons now, apparently. Wouldn't've happened a couple months ago."

"Neither would us breaking a HYDRA asset out of the Triskelion."

"Ain't that the truth." She spins the screwdriver around her fingers. "You've had more contact with the soldier than I have."

"We worked together during the Cold War, yes."

"That a euphemism?" Anya shrugs noncommittally, sliding off the car. "What's your take on this whole situation?"

"She was older than most when she came to me, but I trained her to become a weapon all the same. She's good. Smart. Fast, moreso even than me. Silent. You don't ever know she's there until the garrotte is around your throat."

"That's not what I asked."

She raises her forearm, tapping her fingers against the Widow's Bites strapped to her wrist. "I upgraded these after Callaghan was dispatched publicly, to make them better able to combat her prosthesis. I didn't expect to have to use them for that purpose again, but it never hurts to be prepared for every possibility." Anya trails her fingers along the spines of manuals lining a bookshelf against the back wall of the garage, picking one out and absently thumbing through it. "I should have anticipated this. I've worked deep inside organizations like HYDRA, I know how they function intimately. They don't burn an asset until they've used them up." She drops the manual heavily on the trunk of the car . "Project Insight would have rendered her obsolete, but it failed. HYDRA still has missions for her to run. There's no reason for them to sacrifice her to us unless there's something deeper involved."

"See, that's what I said to ole Stars 'n' Stripes, but she wasn't having any of it."

"And that surprised you? Griffin's not going to believe a word against the Winter Soldier until the truth leaves her bleeding out in the cold."

\--

"Hey team, I finished dinner if anyone's hungry."

It's as good as a call to arms to get them gathered in the tiny kitchen, elbow to elbow, passing plates to one another and doling out cutlery as Monty spoons out casserole and vegetables and smacks Raven's hand away when she tries to sneak a cookie under his watchful eye. Anya notices Clarke filling a second plate and does the same, and the Russian is right by her side when she knocks on the bedroom door.

"You are clear," Bellamy calls out, voice muffled by the solid wood, and Anya tugs the door open and motions Clarke inside.

"Where'd you scrounge up an IV drip?"

"Green said that Maya makes Jordan stock every one of his safehouses with a full trauma kit." Anya passes Bellamy her second plate and perches on the edge of the bedside table. "After all, he comes out of missions injured more often than not."

Clarke smiles weakly. "Luckily for us." Her eyes dart towards the door to the adjoining washroom before falling back to the bed. "She alright?"

Bellamy lets his fork fall back to his plate, reaches over to brush Octavia's hair back away from her face. "She is still stable, still in there. I still do not know why she will not wake up."

"What about…" She jerks her chin towards the washroom in lieu of having to let the soldier's name past her lips. "Am I okay to go in?"

"She came to about an hour ago, and has kept quiet since then. I do not know if you going in is a good idea though, Clarke. She was knocked out in Raven's explosion. You cannot know what that did to her calibration, if anything."

"Calibration? She's not a machine or an asset, Bell, she's a person. Could you let her up?"

"Are you sure that is-"

"Yes."

"Alright."

"We'll be out here," Anya murmurs without looking up from her plate. "Just shout if you need us." Clarke slips into the bathroom, but not before catching Anya's murmured 'not that she would, stubborn asshole' and a muffled laugh from Bellamy.

She fumbles with the dishes she carries, almost drops them when she feels the weight of Lexa's stare. The brunette watches her warily, ignoring the plate Clarke sets down at her side. Her back is ramrod straight where she's seated on the edge of the chipped porcelain tub, her hands settled lightly on her knees.

Clarke sinks down onto her heels in front of the brunette. Blood is still dried in tracks from Lexa's ears down the sides of her jaw, remnants of the repulsor blast that had knocked her unconscious. She can't keep her hand from automatically shifting to rub the streaks away, and there's a sharp pain in her chest when Lexa flinches at the movement. "Lex," she breathes. "Oh, Lex."

"[Mission objective]?"

"I don't speak Russian, Lex."

"[Mission objective]?"

Clarke laughs shakily. "Well, at least you're not trying to kill me, that's a positive."

"[Confirm mission objective: kill]?"

"Anya?" she calls out.

Lexa's eyes dart to the door when it cracks open, focus on Anya and stick to her. "[Confirm mission objective: kill]?" she repeats in monotone, and the Russian stiffens.

"[Deny]," she replies quickly as the door clicks shut behind her, and then she turns to Clarke. "What the hell did you say to her?"

"I didn't-"

"[Mission objective]?" They both stare at Lexa as she interrupts, confusion entering her voice. "[Mission objective]?"

"[Stand down, soldier]," Anya says softly, taking a seat on the edge of the tub beside Lexa. "[Stand down, Petrushka]." She rests a hand on Lexa's metal arm as her shoulders sag and smiles sadly at Clarke, still sitting on her heels. "Take a break, Clarke."

"I-"

"Leave it for tonight." She wants to argue, but Anya's eyes are steel, and so instead she exits the room with a hanging head and a heavy heart.

\--

"What's this, is the Ice Queen melting?" Raven splays herself across the couch beside Clarke and reaches over, lightly punching her in the shoulder as she reaches up to wipe away tears she hadn't even realized were falling. "Where's everyone else?"

"They hit the sack about an hour ago."

Raven hums in acknowledgement, then leans forward enough that she can heft her leg up so her foot is propped on the low coffee table. She unbuckles her newest brace slowly and methodically before turning back to face Clarke. She opens her mouth and then closes it, and it might well be the first time Clarke's ever seen her put this much thought into a comment before she lets it loose. (Clarke thinks that the twenty-three seconds it takes for her to speak is probably the longest Raven's ever been silent.)  "How's she doing?" she finally asks, voice gentle.

"Octavia?"

"The Sol… Callaghan. How's Callaghan?"

"She's been better."

"Still trying to kill you?"

"Not at the moment, but, then again, that's because she doesn't even recognize me as a mission right now, let alone as a friend."

"A…. friend…" Raven drawls, shaking her head. "You not going to tell her, are you?" She drives the pad of her thumb into a knot in the stiff muscle of her thigh, barely holding back a groan at the pleasure the release brings, and she watches Clarke flash from surprise to fear to anger and back again with a smirk. It's not often she's been able to knock her this off kilter, and it looks like she's going to take the opportunity to revel in it.

"Tell her what?"

Raven's hands still on her skin, and Clarke swallows stiffly around the lump in her throat, shifting uncomfortably under her calculating stare. "That you still love her even with her hands around your neck."

"I-"

"Even if she does come back, you're not going to tell her. You spent twenty-five odd years keeping it a secret from her, and it's not as though anything's changed now, right?"

"She's my best friend."

"I've had to see that gross look in your eyes whenever you and Flappy Bird discussed her for months, Cap. You've even got it right now, for fuck's sake. She's tried to kill you however many times and you still look like that when you think of her; she's a hell of a lot more than a best friend."

"It's been _months_ since I lost her. You joke about how I'm in my nineties, but it's been just over two years since she died in front of me, since I _didn't save her_. And then she drops back into my life with a gun held to my fucking head. Call it whatever the hell you want to, but she's the only fucking thing I've got left, and I'm not thinking about fucking making out, I haven't even figured anything out yet. She's the last thing I've got left that's somewhat _normal_ , and she's barely even that anymore. I'm just trying to tread water here, I'm just trying not to drown."

Raven lets out her breath. "Well, after that stunt you pulled on that Helicarrier, that's a relief."

"She pulled me out of the river, after that. Watched me fall, then jumped after me and pulled me out of the water. And I couldn't even do the same for her."

"What, you'd rather HYDRA had snagged two supersoldiers to brainwash instead of just one? There was nothing you could have done."

"I could have _gone back_."

"You were in a war. You were more concerned with the living than the girl you thought was dead, as you should have been. You need to stop blaming yourself, alright?"

Clarke frowns momentarily, then nods and picks at a thread that's loosened from the seam of her jeans. "Did you get the suit patched up?"

"I'm going to put in some more work on it tonight, then it'll be as ready as I can make it with the equipment we have on hand. Hiding out here isn't going to be viable as a permanent solution, though."

"Ten-four. We've just got to let the heat die down before we can move somewhere that's slightly more on the grid."

"The Tower'll still be lowkey enough, yeah?" she laughs, grinning.

"Actually, there's no SHIELD surveillance in there, right?" Raven raises an eyebrow and just stares at her, and Clarke snorts. "Right. As long as we can get in under the radar, we'd be able to work from there with your resources without anyone even having a clue we're using it as our base."

"That's… actually pretty brilliant, Rocket Pop. Didn't think you had it in you. Construction's not completely finished on your floors, but I can call in a rush to Harper, get it prioritized while we're here."

"My floors?"

"Well, your _floor_. I planned one for each of you. Well, for the original Avengers. But Katniss is off playing house husband, Point Break is Indra knows where, and the Lean Green Fighting Machine has vanished, so all the kids will still get their own for now. Though, if the arachnid kid ever drops by, we're gonna need to reevaluate."

"Wait. You built us each a floor in your building?"

"Yeah, you'll love it! You've got a gorgeous gym and an art studio, groceries are delivered, there's-"

"Raven, I'm not going to live in your building, not after we're done with Jaha."

"Why not? It'll be great!"

"I want to go home when this is all over. Back to Washington."

"Oh. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. I can help you find a place when the time comes, if you want?"

"That'd be nice, thanks."

"No problem, grandma. It'll even help me earn my Girl Scout badge for working with the elderly!" Clarke shoves the engineer's arm, then crinkles her nose and sinks back into the cushions, and for once Raven leaves the silence between them intact.


	7. Chapter 7

**December 16, 1996**

\--

_The roads are slick with ice, the tires skidding, slipping, threatening to spill the car off the edge of the road._

_Daniel grips the steering wheel tighter, and Isabella reaches over, resting her hand on his forearm. He glances back at her, a grin flickering across his face. "It's alright, sweetheart, just a bit of snow."_

_But there's movement in his peripheral, and when his eyes shoot back towards the road he can't quite comprehend the face he sees in the headlights. He tugs hard on the wheel, the car swerving, tumbling, rolling, his head whipping back and forth before everything comes to a halt, eerily still._

_Then the windshield smashes in around him, glass flying through the air, metal fingers stretching towards him. He peers forward through the shards and a ghost stares back._

_"Lexa," he whispers, but there's no recognition on her face as her hand reaches for his throat, and he knows that death has come for him._

\--

**September 8, 2014**

\--

When Clarke wakes up to the smell of frying bacon, it takes her a long moment to place herself, in the unfamiliar bed in the unfamiliar room. Raven and Monty are in the kitchen, spewing friendly insults back and forth, rapid fire, and she's not in the right headspace to face them yet, to face _Raven_ , and so she seats herself at the dusty, child-sized desk, her knees wedged beneath the writing surface.

A guffaw drifts up through the floorboards, and Clarke whirls in the chair, primed to sprint downstairs before she reminds herself it's only Raven. She's been thrown off enough by that in the past twelve hours to be okay, by looking at the engineer and seeing in her a man she'd talked to what felt like only last week but who'd been dead for over twenty years. Sitting on the couch with Raven talking plans and strategy and Lexa had dragged her straight back into the theatre of war.

Speaking of Lexa… She glances to her left. The battered folder still rests where she'd tossed it the night before, cover smeared with ash and blood. It's the only copy they'd managed to bring with them from the Triskelion, only _intact_ one, that is, and as such she treats it with reverence, her movements careful as she flips it open.

There are a pair of photos stapled to the top of the first page, and Clarke's breath catches in her throat at the sight. The first, the fresh-faced Lexa from early on in the war effort, the girl she remembers waving off to battle with tears in her eyes and heart bursting with pride, sends nostalgia rocketing through her, and she purses her lips together in an effort to maintain composure. The effort fails once she gets a better look at the second picture, a snapshot taken through the glass of a cryo chamber, the Soldier's cheeks pale and gaunt and eyelashes crusted with ice.

The ache in her chest grows larger with every moment she stares.

\--

When Monty pokes his head around the doorjamb, the file lies scattered across the floor of the bedroom, and the tear tracks down Clarke's cheeks have long since dried.

"Hey, you better come out here. Anya's been up on the roof all night, she just radioed down that we're in trouble."

She nods sharply and swipes her forearm across her face. "Ten-four." He lingers at the door, and she makes sure to avoid eye contact, to dodge the inevitable questions, as she stacks the file pages and tosses the folder back onto the desk.

The kitchen is crowded with half-dressed heroes clutching coffee mugs and plates of breakfast. Clarke murmurs thanks to Bellamy when he presses a chipped cup into her hand, and she knocks it back, nodding in satisfaction at the dark roast. For as much of a dumbass as Hawkeye could be, the kid sure knew his coffees.

Anya appears at her side, swiping the mug straight from her hand and downing it in one go. Clarke considers complaining for a fraction of a second, before she notices the dark circles under the spy's eyes. "We've got incoming. We need to move to a new location."

Bellamy slams his mug down on the counter. "How the hell did they find us?" They turn in unison to where Raven sits perched on the counter, legs dangling in space.

"Why's everyone go straight to _me_ ," she groans, "we took fire when we were getting out but it didn't damage the stealth-"

"We don't have time to argue about who's to blame," Anya pipes up again, this time from the corner of the kitchen, in between bacon strips. "The how doesn't matter, all that's relevant right now is that the location leaked. They've activated all available STRIKE teams." She swallows, and then her gaze flickers to the transmitter at her wrist. "Perimeter's at a kilometre and closing fast. Barn's about fifty metres up the ridge. Unless we want to fight our way out, we need to go, _now_."

Clarke spins on her heel, ducking back into the bedroom momentarily to shove the folder back into the bug-out bag she'd brought in from the Quinjet. She hefts the strap up over her shoulder and activates the magnets to hold her shield to her forearm. When she slips out into the hall, she runs headlong into Anya, already clad in full gear.

"I'm going to activate the Soldier," she says brusquely, nodding down the hall. "You should be there."

"No." Clarke shakes her head and brushes past Anya. "We don't use Lexa. We're not HYDRA." _We're not monsters_.

Anya grabs her wrist, wrenches her back so they're face to face. "We need her," she hisses, glancing over her shoulder toward the confusion of the living room and then lowering her voice even further. "We can hardly deal with one noncombatant body in conflict, let alone two. We _need_ this, or we're going to have to leave a friendly behind. You want to be the one who has to tell Bell that we're sacrificing his sister?"

Clarke lets her gaze flicker up towards the ceiling as she blows out a long breath. She's not sure what choice is worse; the soldier wreaking devastation or the empty shell staring blankly forward. But one has its uses, however much the thought of using HYDRA's methods gives her a mouthful of bile.

"Do it."

\--

When Clarke emerges back into the living room, Raven is still scrambling around the house gathering together bits and bobs, and she stares in confusion at the growing pile of gear that builds up in front of the couch. Monty, who, if Clarke knows him at _all_ , would have been standing ready at the door within seconds of Anya's evacuation order, shares an eye roll with her over the top of the engineer's head.

"We've been here twelve hours, Raven. How'd you manage to get your stuff _everywhere_?"

"I got inspired," she mumbles, even as she fiddles at a loose join in her armour with a soldering iron while toeing through the blankets strewn across the couch.

Anya clears her throat from the door of the master bedroom as she and Bellamy step out. Clarke barely sees them, what with Lexa standing tall behind them, Octavia slung over her shoulder and the soldier looking the most alert Clarke's seen her in this era. "Reyes, whatever you don't have in a bag on your back in the next twelve seconds, we're leaving behind."

Raven dives down to sweep her gear together, and Lexa stiffens at the sudden movement, her metal hand balling into a fist. There's acid in Clarke's throat when all Anya needs is a small gesture at her side to get her to heel, for the tension to leach from her shoulders.

"Are we good to go?" Monty asks from the door, pulling the rig for his flight gear tighter around his chest. "Anya?"

"They've got us surrounded." She crosses the living room to stand at his side, pulling her gun from the holster at her hip and weighing it in her hand. "We're going to be under attack the second we step out that door."

Monty winks at her, his hand on the doorknob. "Thought that was just how we liked it."

"Green, you know me too well."

He throws the door wide open.

\--

Lexa's on her left, just back of her shoulder, when they burst out the front doors and into a firefight. Anya enters the fray first, firing to incapacitate, her shots meeting knees and elbows, hands and feet. Raven and Monty take to the air, weaving across the yard through a hail of bullets, while Bellamy darts from agent to agent, sparks flicking from his fingertips and a path of unconscious fighters left in his wake.

Clarke raises her shield to deflect a knife thrown towards her side, adrenaline rising up hot in her chest and coursing wildly through her veins. She slides feet first under an outstretched arm then launches up, knocking a pistol out of an agent's grasp and clipping him in the temple with her elbow on the backswing. She grabs the back of his jumpsuit and tears him out of the way as a host of agents enter the fray.

She can't see Bellamy or Anya through the crowds swarming them, her world shrinking down to the men in front of her and the girl beside her. It's almost uncomfortable how familiar this is, wielding her shield in battle with Lexa covering her left. They're mirror images, whirling dervishes of serum and vibranium and steel.

She's fighting back an agent on her right when Lexa shoots her metal arm through her peripheral, deflecting a bullet midair. Clarke dispatches the agent and whirls, then stills when she finds herself face to face with Lexa. "Thanks, Lex," she says with a grin.

"[Watch your left]," is the unintelligible growl she gets in return. The soldier's fingers morph and tighten around the hilt of the cleaver in her hand as she moves on to her next attacker.

Clarke recognizes the knife from the kitchen of Jasper's hidey-hole, a room that, up until now, she'd been fairly certain Lexa hadn't entered. She wields it with ruinous efficiency and no concern for preservation of life, moving effortlessly from hack to swipe to slash. The agents outnumber them five, ten to one, but Lexa keeps going despite the onslaught, ignores the wounds she takes, dark red spots blooming on her jumpsuit. Octavia remains uninjured in her grasp.

Clarke has to rip her eyes away from the deadly ballet when an arm is thrown around her neck, and she rolls forward, flings the agent over her shoulder so that he hits the ground with a sickening crunch. She doesn't give herself any leeway to think about the possibilities, just moves on to the next attacker, a swarthy figure with a full-face mask. His fist lands directly in the centre of her chest, the blow caving her lungs in and knocking her back onto her bug-out bag. She rolls to the side on pure instinct as his foot is aimed for her head, and blocks another strike with the shield. Nausea ripples through her stomach at the jolts of pain from cracked ribs, but she keeps the shield steady, blocks the rapid blows her attacker fells one by one. He's quick for his size, for an unpowered human, and so he's able to knock the shield aside as she struggles to regain her feet and drives his knuckles into the side of her face.

Her jaw crumples at the blow, and her vision swims. She can see just enough to make out a shadow looming over her

\--

The blonde is slumped in the dirt, face caved in and fluid leaking from her ears. _Evaluate_. Her chest rises and falls rapidly, her eyes are cracked open, but not tracking movement. _Threat level: minimal_. The Asset clenches their fist tighter around the hilt of the kitchen knife and spins, ducking below a roundhouse kick and slamming their knuckles into the attacker's side.

A pure note chimes out at the impact, at metal meeting metal, and the attacker, _SHIELD insignia_ , narrows his eyes and lunges towards them, _threat level: moderate_. The Asset blocks each attempt with their arm, the clashes ringing out across the battlefield, and hefts the Mission Objective higher on their shoulder when the girl begins to slip. The SHIELD agent is unrelenting but the Asset doesn't flinch, instead grabs his wrist in their metal hand when he tries to throw the next punch. They fire off a bolt of electrical energy through their palm, and the man's skin _flickers_ , flashing silver-blue-tan-red-grey in sequence before his eyes roll back and he falls away.

The Asset inhales and exhales twice as their arm recharges, and takes the opportunity to glance back down at the blonde. _Re-evaluate_. She's on one knee now, the side of her face blotchy with bruising and her shield held between her and the downed SHIELD agents. _Status: possible ally_. She pushes herself the rest of the way to her feet and turns to charge back into the fray, but the Asset reaches out and grabs her arm. Their eyes meet, and the Asset momentarily forgets why they stopped her. _Reset_.

"[There is a 93% probability that the Mission Objective would die]," they say, and the blonde stares at them, _confusion_.

"<There is a 93% probability that the Mission Objective would die>," they repeat in German. _Confusion_.

"There is a 93% probability that the Mission Objective would die," they state again, and the English changes the blonde's expression, _understanding_ , before it snaps back, _confusion_.

"You stopped me-" she winces at the movement of her jaw, _pain_. The bone seems to have been reset beneath the bruising, _status: potential healing factor_.

They do not have time for questions. "Your survival increases the odds of the Mission Objective's survival by 17%."

The blonde nods, her face dropping, _sorrow_ , for a moment, almost too brief for the Asset to register. "What do you suggest?"

"Retreat to the safe house. A base increases the odds of the Mission Objective's survival by 5%, though remaining there for longer than four hours will then decrease it by 24%."

"The safe house it is, then." The blonde's arm moves slightly, hand coming towards them before she lets it fall away. "Do you need help with _?O/oh?_ "

"Repeat."

The blonde gestures towards the Mission Objective. "Octavia, do you need help carrying her?"

"Negative." They turn on their heel, and footsteps on the grass behind them indicate that the blonde follows.

There's whistling loud in their ears, and they shift left, their muscles firing hard as their grip tightens around the Mission Objective. The bullet rips through the window of the safe house, _intended trajectory: non-lethal_ , and they break into a sprint. They ram their shoulder into the door and knock it off its hinges and the blonde is at their shoulder when they step back into cover.

They hustle the blonde into the cover of the kitchen, and use their metal arm to wrench the refrigerator away from the wall and shove it in front of the door. They turn and lay the Mission Objective down on the floor, then pull out the drawers two at a time, rifling through them and stacking recovered weaponry on the counter. It's a well-stocked safe house, and the guns pile up in front of them as they move on to the cabinets.

"Do you have a plan?"

"Acquire weaponry. Protect the Mission Objective. Repeat." There's a grenade launcher beneath the sink. The corner of their mouth pulls up, _excitement_.

\--

The garage door blows open as Anya reaches it, the blast throwing her back off her feet. She rolls to a stop and grabs Bellamy's collar, dragging him through the dust and into the relative cover of the shed. Monty covers their backs as he waves them up into the Quinjet, and Anya shoves her pistol back into the holster. "Raven, we need to _go_ ," she shouts, and she quickly wraps an arm around Bellamy's chest, putting all her weight into keeping him on the jet as he flails in her grasp.

The Sokovian strains against her hold, his hands scrabbling at her jacket. " _I am not leaving her_." The hair stands up on her arms as he primes his powers, and she's about to slip her arm up around his neck to close his airway and knock him unconscious when Monty steps in and lands an uppercut under his chin. He goes limp in her grasp.

Anya gives him a nod of thanks as he helps her lowers Bellamy to the deck, and then she glances back towards the rear of the jet. There's a line of SHIELD agents charging towards them unthwarted, and the others are nowhere to be seen. " _Now_ , Reyes!"

"Where's Cap?"

" _Reyes, take off_."

Raven's hands still on the controls, and a note of panic seeps into her voice. "Monty, _where's Cap_?"

Anya leans over the back of her chair and motions out through the windshield. "We can't wait for them," she says, resting a gentle hand on Raven's shoulder. "Get us out of here. _Now_."

And when they circle back around, gaining height with every second, the house below goes up in flames.


	8. Chapter 8

**December 8, 1941**

\--

_Clarke wakes with a cough rattling deep in her chest, gasping for air as she tugs the worn-out woolen blanket tighter around her body and burrows deeper into the mattress. Her breath spills from her lips in white swirls of condensation, and she curls her hands into fists and pins them beneath her arms._

_Lexa leans against the doorframe, a battered mug cupped in her hands, steam rising up and obscuring the bottom half of her face, but Clarke only needs to catch a glimpse of the look in her eyes to know the brunette is hiding something._

_"What is it?" she rasps, and the words set off another coughing fit._

_"Nothing you need to worry about. Just get some more rest, Clarke, okay? You don't want this cold to get worse, right?"_

_"Lexa."_

_She rolls the mug back and forth between her palms. "The Japanese bombed Hawaii."_

_"What?"_

_"We're at war, Clarke."_

\--

**September 8, 2014**

\--

"You're bleeding." Her words trip and stutter through the pain that lances from her jaw, but she powers through. "Badly."

Lexa doesn't even glance up as she sifts through the pile of weaponry, methodically tucking knives into the tops of her boots and strapping holsters about her chest and hips. "The wounds are minor, and thus irrelevant to the Mission Objective." The reply would have been more plausible had Clarke missed the quiet hiss of pain when Lexa cinches the next holster on too tightly.

"You're bleeding through your shirt, they've gotta be bad. We need to bandage those up." The tense soldier jerks away when Clarke reaches for her side. She raises her hands and takes a step back. "I'm a friend, Lexa, I'm not going to hurt you."

"Who is Lexa?"

Her breath catches in her throat, and she busies her hands pulling the straps of her bugout bag off her shoulders to stop herself from throwing a punch at the wall. "Your name is Alexandra Callaghan. Lexa." Her speech is punctuated by the ricochet of bullets off the siding of the house, and Clarke ducks her head reflexively. Lexa remains frozen in place, her hand resting on the grip of one of her pistols and her eyes flickering back and forth, searching wildly for a response.

"False," Lexa replies after a time, watching Clarke's movements closely as she pulls a first aid kit from her bag. "I am the Asset."

Clarke inhales sharply and then squeezes her eyes shut, fights hard to calm her breathing, keep it slow and measured. When she opens them again, Lexa's hands move to the hem of her shirt, tugging the fabric free where it's crusted to her skin by tacky blood, and this time she allows Clarke to touch her. She makes quick work of swabbing away the blood smeared across Lexa's side, and she swipes her thumb across the circle of an entry wound.

"You've been shot." Lexa takes hold of her wrist and moves her hand away firmly. She presses at her hipbone until she's got the lump of the bullet wedged between her thumb and forefinger, then pulls a knife free of her belt. "What are-" Clarke winces and turns her head away as Lexa slices a gash open across the bullet hole and digs the slug free of her side with metal fingers.

Lexa lets the bullet slip from her hand, and it pings when it hits the kitchen tile. "The wound is minor… _friend_..." The word sounds unpracticed coming out of her mouth, and then Lexa clenches her jaw, turns away and begins disassembling the grenade launcher.

Clarke stares at the soldier, mouth gaping open. "What- Wait- You just-" She sighs, and sifts through the first aid kit. "At least let me close that up with butterfly stitches." The _dumbass_ just grunts in the affirmative, and tilts her hip towards Clarke for treatment as she moves on to reassembly of the weapon.

Lexa's blood is warm and sticky on her skin as she pinches the edges of the wound together, and bile burns up her throat. She swallows roughly, and sticks the stitches down just before a shot hits the kitchen window. The glass cracks around the point of impact, and Clarke's head snaps up.

Lexa places the grenade launcher gently on the ground and reaches down, prying Clarke's fingers free from where she's clenched them unconsciously in the soldier's hip. "The window is made of one-way bullet-resistant glass. It will take three more shots of that calibre for it to break."

"We can't wait around for that to happen. We need to go on the offensive, or we're going to be trapped in here."

"Affirmative."

\--

 _We are at war. There will be casualties. We are at_ war _._

The refrain echoes in Clarke's head as Lexa places herself between Octavia and the outside of the house and steadies the grenade launcher against her shoulder. The soldier had muttered something about 'thermobaric warheads' and 'blast radius' under her breath, and while Clarke's never been one to wield a gun, she knows enough to understand the extent of the destruction those words entail. She lowers herself to one knee and covers her side with her shield, and watches with rapt attention as Lexa inhales.

The Winter Soldier has always looked at home with a rifle in her hands, with eyes cold and calculating, the sniper settled on the edge of the battlefield all but separated from her humanity. Clarke wishes she could say that was the difference, what held Lexa apart from the HYDRA asset, but she'd been the same during the war. Calm, cool, distant. A gun with no name.

She stops breathing as Lexa exhales slowly, carefully squeezes the trigger. The soldier jolts up when the shot leaves the barrel, but reins herself in and discards the weapon as the warhead shatters the window, sending the shards of glass flying outwards. Clarke stiffens in preparation for impact, and beside her Lexa wraps her body around Octavia, a living shield.

The shockwave knocks her backwards into the wall, pain ricocheting through her head as the air is ripped from her lungs, and then everything goes black.

\--

They come to slowly, coughing up ash and dust, their head pounding where their skull had been slammed against the kitchen wall. They wipe the sleeve of their jumpsuit across their eyes, clearing their vision, and struggle to a kneeling position. They clear the rubble from around the Mission Objective and press their fingers to her carotid, nodding to themselves when they feel the pulse, _weak and thready_ , against their skin. _Alive but unresponsive. Minimal change in status._

They prop her up against what remains of the kitchen wall before scrambling through the debris where they'd last seen the blonde. _Chance of Mission Objective's survival increases by 32% if alive._ The shield is exposed first, glinting under the harsh light of the sun overhead, _approaching noon_ , and then blonde hair turned grey with soot. They grasp her shoulder in their metal hand and roll her over, catching the rise of her chest before looking to her face-

 _Clarke whirls around the corner, combat helmet strapped tight on her head, grime streaked across her cheeks-_  

**_Reset._ **

_The Mission Objective whirls around the corner, combat helmet strapped tight on her head._  

 **_Reset_** **_._ **

_The blonde whirls around the corner-_

**_RESET_** **_._ **

-catching the rise of her chest before looking to her face. They shake their head violently until the blurry feeling of déjà vu clears, and tilt the blonde's chin to the side to survey the damage. All that remains of the fracture is bruising along the blonde's jawline, and her eyes flicker open at the motion.

They wrap their metal arm around the blonde's torso and boost the girl upright as profanity slips from her tongue in a jumbled mess. "The shield," she mumbles, and they settle her up against the wall beside the Mission Objective before ducking down to sift through the wreckage again.

The leather straps hug their skin comfortably, familiarly, when they slip the shield up onto their arm. They swallow back confusion and steel themselves before looking at the blonde. "We need to leave. Can you run?"

The blonde struggles to her feet and nods stiffly, face creasing at the movement, _pain_. "I'm ready." She purses her lips slightly, but doesn't comment on the Asset keeping hold of the shield. "Lead the way."

\--

Clarke's breath catches in her throat, harsh and sour and choking, when they clear the broken frame of Jasper's safehouse and are able to witness the devastation Lexa had wreaked upon the SHIELD squadron. The lethality zone spans a ten metre space in the area between the house and the garage, marked by charred corpses stained vibrant red.

She reels for a second, pressing her fist hard against her mouth, but one glance towards Lexa is all she needs to rein her emotions in. The brunette stands there watching her warily, Octavia slung over one shoulder and the shield strapped tight to her other arm. It pulls her back to the days of the Howling Commandos, when they'd spar before bed under a blanket of stars, Lexa using the shield to block every punch and kick with a stupid grin on her face. She sees Lexa Callaghan in the Soldier for a fleeting second, and it grounds her.

Lexa surveys the carnage with a calculating gaze before she juts her chin out towards the edge of the forest that borders the property. "We must find cover before reinforcements arrive."

Clarke nods her agreement, and Lexa takes off running. She moves easily despite the weight of the Sokovian slung over her shoulder, her limbs sliding into place like a machine, like she could run forever. Every step Clarke takes to follow sends jolts of pain through her head, and she mumbles thanks under her breath to the supersoldier serum coursing through her veins. Without it, she's sure Lexa would have her on her back like a sack of flour, right beside Octavia.

That, or Lexa would have deemed her of no use, and left her behind to die.

She swallows thickly, spits a mouthful of blood to her side, and keeps running.

\--

As dusk falls and the woods grow dark, they come to a halt. The blonde slides her bugout bag from her back and unzips it wordlessly, tugging out a tarp that she presses into their hands. There's something naggingly familiar in the ease of their movements, in the way the campsite comes together quickly under their hands. The déjà vu tugs at the back of their head again

**Reset.**

They circle the perimeter of the camp as the blonde pulls protein bars out of the bag, catches the one she tosses over easily in their metal hand. They leave it there, in their tight grip, until the blonde stares up at her, _upset_ , and motions at it with her own empty wrapper.

"You need to eat, Lexa."

 ~~She~~ they become aware, then, of the gnawing in the pit of their stomach, though they're unsure how long it's been pulling at their insides. The bar disappears in two bites, _mint chocolate_ , and they continue pacing, head up, on high alert.

\--

The blonde has been asleep, head pillowed on her folded arms, for the better part of an hour when they hear the howl, far to their left. Their head shoots up, _wolf_ , and they're on their feet automatically, knife pulled from their belt and clenched in their fist. The howl comes anew, _gray wolf_ , and their brow furrows, _confusion_. The inflection of the call is _wrong_ , and when they scour their memory they find the relevant information. Gray wolves do not populate this area, have not in dozens of years.

They slip from shadow to shadow towards the disturbance. The howl echoes again, this time answered by a call from behind them, and they increase their pace, staying low to the ground as they near the original source.

The agent doesn't have time to draw breath before his throat is slit.

They locate the corpse's partner with just as much ease, but she takes a moment longer to dispatch, landing a blow to their side before blood comes bubbling from between her lips thanks to the knife driven hilt-deep in her chest. It's hot against their skin, and they wipe their hand clean on their pant leg before continuing on.

When they return to camp, the blonde is staring up at them with wide-eyes, her hand resting on the Mission Objective's shoulder.

Their eyes flick from the tented tarp to the glowing embers to the blonde's blanched face. It's then that they notice the change.

The Mission Objective is vibrating.

\--

The fist catches Clarke under the chin, knocks her backwards, sprawled out on her ass with her head ringing. Her vision clears slowly. Lexa's silhouette is backlit by the soft glow of the embers. She has a pistol in her metal hand, aimed at the space between Clarke's eyes, when a blur streaks between them.

Clarke rolls to the side as a gunshot shatters the silence. She scrambles for her bugout bag, fumbling through a side pocket for the flashlight she's  _sure_ should be in there as the blur zooms by Lexa again. She pulls it free and flicks it on, shouts "Hey, whoa!" as light glints off the gun barrel that's still pointed in her direction. "Hey, whoa," she repeats softly, raising her free hand above her head, "it's just me. Friends, remember?"

The blur shoots through a third time, Lexa stumbling back a step or two, pulling a knife from a thigh sheath as the blur coalesces into Octavia. Lexa's gun is stuffed behind her belt, and she's idly juggling the bullets she'd emptied from the magazine in one hand.

"You didn't see that coming?"

Clarke gapes at her, the flashlight beam wavering when she chokes back a sob. She swallows hard around the lump in her throat and strides forward, wrapping Octavia up in a bruising hug. "I told you to walk it off, kid," she mumbles into the girl's hair as Octavia wavers unsteadily. "That was an order."


	9. Chapter 9

**March 17, 1948**

\--

 _"[You'll listen to the radio every night.]" Anatolia is perched on the arm of the couch, one knee tucked up under her chin and her arms wrapped tight about her shin. "[You can go by years, decades, undercover, watching and listening and_ waiting _. And, one day, out of the blue, the code word will come. And then it's time to come home]."_

_The girl watches her through hooded eyes, her posture taut and careful, on edge. She'd been delivered to her at midnight, under the cover of darkness, black-bagged and her hands cuffed behind her. She's given up wresting at her bonds in favour of preserving energy, and instead sits opposite her, seething._

_"If you put me in the field, I won't be coming back."_

_"[It's not a matter of what you desire, Petrushka]." She flinches at the word, then tips her chin up and clenches her jaw._

_"My name is Alexandra Elizabeth Callaghan. Sergeant in the 107th Division. 3-2-5-5-7-0-3-8."_

_"[Deny, Petrushka. You are the Winter Soldier]."_

_"[Alexandra Elizabeth Callaghan, 107th]."_

_"[You are the Winter Soldier. Comply]."_

_"[I'm Alexa-]"_

_"[Comply, Petrushka]."_

_"[I-]"_

_"[Comply]."_

_"[Mission objective]?"_

_"[Stand down, soldier. Stand down, Petrushka]." The girl's shoulders loosen, and her head drops. "[Again. You will listen to the radio ever night. You might spend years undercover, but every night you will listen. And then, when the code word comes, you will come home. Do you understand]?"_

_The girl's head snaps up, her eyes piercing straight through Anatolia. "Da." There's something in her tone that tugs at the grey blur in the centre of her brain, and it doesn't take much to see the lie._

_Anatolia rises from her seat and pads across the carpet, pokes her head out into the hallway. "[The asset needs to be reset]."_

_The girl doesn't pull her gaze from Anatolia as she's dragged from the room. The grey-green lingers behind her eyelids for the rest of the day, and haunts her even in her dreams._

\--

**September 9, 2014**

\--

"Do you have a lead on them?"

"No, Zero Clarke Thirty's gone off the grid." Bellamy cocks his fist back, red sparks licking up his skin, and Raven reaches out, grabbing his wrist. "Hey, I already had to fix up this place once in the last year. I don't really feel like doing it again. We'll find them, or they'll find us first." She releases him and settles back into the couch cushions, lifting her braced leg up onto the coffee table. "Your sister's with Captain America and a Russian assassin that, on Volkoff's orders, will give her life for her or die trying. Right?"

"Exactly," Anya comments from the kitchen island. She clinks her spoon against the side of her coffee mug, her mouth quirking up into a tiny grin. "If anyone can bring them home safe, it's the Winter Soldier."

"But you're sure the programming will last? She will not wake up from it and attempt to kill them?"

"It'll stick, Bell. As long as HYDRA doesn't override it, it'll stick." If only Raven hadn't known her long enough to hear the slight hitch in her voice. Bellamy, on the other hand, doesn't seem to notice it, and he leaves the room with a silent nod. She's about to press the issue when the Russian pushes her mug aside and rises into a defensive stance, her hand going to the pistol at her belt.

"What-" She's turning in the direction of Anya's gaze when Jasper hurdles the back of the couch and slams down into the cushions beside her, barely avoiding the elbow she throws out of habit. "I see you got my message, then."

He rubs at his bandaged temple and winces. "Not until fifteen minutes ago, actually. I was a bit preoccupied with the twenty-odd SHIELD agents Maya and I woke up to."

"What, the pair of you aren't into voyeurism?"

"Funny."

"Where's your better half, anyway? You get her tucked away in another one of your hidey-holes?"

"Now that you lot burned down my childhood home, I haven't got another safehouse that SHIELD doesn't have a lock on. She's down in medical getting checked out."

"She alright?"

"Yeah, just a bit banged up."

"Well, if it makes you feel any better, we didn't actually torch your place. You've got Cap'n Crunch and her merry band of misfits to thank for that."

"Surprisingly enough, that's not helping." He leans forward and snags half a bagel from her breakfast plate, ignoring her protests as he inhales it. "We got a plan to get them back?"

"I've got facial recognition software going through CCTV feeds from across the Midwest." Anya fills a Falcon mug, crosses from the kitchen and presses it into Jasper's hand, nodding in acknowledgement of his murmured thanks. "If any of them step in front of a camera out there, we'll be the first to know."

"I'm working on hacking into SHIELD servers. I'm hoping it'll only take a couple hours, but they've beefed up their security since the last time I did it, so it might be a bit longer."

"How do you expect SHIELD to know where they are if we don’t?" Jasper queries, waving wildly at Monty as he enters the kitchen from the direction of the gym, his running gear drenched in sweat. The soldier sweeps up the other half of her bagel as he takes a seat on the edge of the coffee table beside her knee. (She needs new friends.)

"They found us in Waverly," he remarks between bites, "and we're not sure if it was because of the Quinjet, or if it was something we haven't seriously considered."

"What he means," Raven says harshly at Jasper's confused glance, "is that the Soldier might be a lot more cognizant of exactly what's happening than we've given her credit for."

\--

Octavia jogs back towards them, her steps exaggerated and bouncing. She's been testing her limits all morning under Lexa's watchful eye. Pushing herself has made her hunch over and vomit on more than one occasion, but she's all but laughed it off, full of elation after Clarke had filled her in on the outcome of the fight against Ultron. She transitions easily into a gainer, beaming when she lands the trick before squatting down beside Clarke and sketching out a map in the dirt. "There is a general store a mile or two ahead. It is not very busy, but not so empty that your presence would be suspicious. There are five houses along the road that you'll have to pass once you leave the treeline, and corn fields on the other side. One security camera overtop of the entrance."

She nods quickly, shucking her bugout bag off her shoulders as she climbs to her feet and digging a wad of cash out of a side pocket. "Alright. If I'm not back in two hours, you can assume SHIELD's grabbed me."

"We can only hope," Octavia taunts with a wink, sifting through the bag. "Are we out of food?"

" _Someone_ was a bit of a pig last night."

"I just came out of a coma!" She looks to Lexa for support, but the soldier only arches an eyebrow before turning her attention back to the disassembled gun in front of her. "No matter. You will stock us up?"

"It's on the list. Anything you need, Lexa?"

"I require one hundred and sixty sparklers, three metres of fishing line, a roll of paper towel, two cans of hornet spray, and a roll of fuse," she replies, rapid-fire, punctuating her sentence with the click of a magazine back into her reassembled pistol. She raises the gun and checks the sight, grunting in approval and sliding it into her shoulder holster, then glances over to find Clarke and Octavia staring back at her. "As well as a bottle of a dry lubricant."

"Duly noted," Clarke murmurs, tugging her notebook out of a hip pocket and jotting down the items. "That all?"

Lexa glances at the notebook with narrowed eyes before staring down at her hands, balled into tight fists in her lap. "One of those," she mutters, just loud enough that Clarke can hear the words, and the blonde nods slowly, rubbing her thumb over the edge of the pages.

"I'll see what I can do."

\--

The expedition goes surprisingly smoothly, thanks in part to the sunglasses and ballcap she dons before she leaves the camp. It probably also didn’t hurt that she’d heavily implied she was fleeing from an abusive husband. She slides an extra twenty across the counter when the owner finishes ringing through her purchases and gets a wink and a curt nod in return.

When she unpacks her spoils, she has to hold Octavia back from burning straight through a twelve-pack of protein bars, and she almost thinks she gets a shadow of a smile from Lexa when she hands over a pocket notebook and ballpoint pen, though it’s probably a trick of the light.

They put another hundred or so miles behind them before calling it a day, and Clarke relents easily at Octavia’s announcement that she'll take first watch. She’s got no energy to argue, not after a day spent trying to keep up with a superpowered speedster's 'slow'.

When she stirs in preparation for her turn at watch, she's surprised to see both Octavia and Lexa huddled around the remnants of the campfire, their heads together. She rubs the sleep out of her eyes and approaches, lingering just out of the glow until Lexa's head snaps up.

"[The blonde has awoken]."

"[Her name is Clarke]," Octavia chides gently, while Clarke narrows her eyes in bewilderment.

"[Klark]," Lexa sounds out, and it's the smoothest attempt yet, tugging sharply at Clarke’s chest as it tumbles from her lips.

She bites her lip and raises her chin, blinking back tears as she steps closer. "Lexa, it's your turn to rest." The soldier looks about to protest, but Octavia shakes her head as Clarke steels her gaze, and she seems to recognize it as a lost cause, moving to lie prone on top of the blanket beneath the tarp tent, her body rigid. Clarke takes up her place at Octavia's side, scooping up a stick from the kindling the speedster had gathered earlier and prodding aimlessly at the dying embers. "You two seem to be getting along well."

"Sokovian is a variation of Russian. The dialect is close enough to the original form that we are able to communicate with relative ease. It is… comforting." She drags a finger rapidly through the dirt, then wipes out the lines before Clarke can make sense of what she's drawn. "She is ordered to protect me," she surveys Clarke, and nods once, "but you knew that. We have been discussing our options."

"Your… options…?"

"She informed me that you've encountered SHIELD agents despite leaving no trail. She expressed concerns that it's her presence that's putting me at risk."

"We're not splitting up with her," Clarke growls, the stick splintering as she tightens her fist. "It's not just her they're after; we're all on the run from SHIELD."

"She didn't say that she should leave," Octavia replies softly, her fingers again tracing through the dirt, sketching out a series of intersecting circles. "She said that I should."

\--

"What the hell?"

Octavia reaches out for her for a moment, then drops her hand, and Clarke storms over to the tarp. She grabs Lexa by the front of the jacket she'd picked up for her earlier, the one she'd mutilated the moment she'd received it, and drags her to her feet.

"What the fucking hell, Lexa?"

Lexa's eyes are bleary and soft in the moment before she comes fully awake, but then she's reaching to her thigh for a knife. Clarke's a beat faster, slamming her palm down on the hilt and stilling it in the sheath. Lexa stiffens, her metal arm whirring and clicking as her grip tightens overtop of Clarke's fingers.

"Retreat, ally."

"Fuck that." She pulls Lexa towards her, until they're eye to eye, the tips of their noses nearly brushing. "Why don't you tell me what the hell kinda game you're playing at, Lex? Hey? Care to fill me in?"

Lexa blinks slowly, her tongue darting out to moisten her lips. "I don't understand what you mean," she husks, rubbing at the back of her neck with her free hand.

"Your little fucking pow-wow with O is what I fucking _mean_. Where the hell do you get off, suggesting we split up with her? _I'm_ the captain here." Behind her, she hears Octavia whistle lowly, mutter _'jeez, who died and made you queen of Indiana?'_ under her breath, and she wrests her hand out of Lexa's grasp and shoots her the bird over her shoulder.

"You're just a PFC, Griffin," Lexa shoots back with a toothy grin. "Learn to take an order for once."

Clarke inhales sharply, losing her grip on the front of Lexa's jacket and stumbling back a step. She raises a hand to cover her mouth as she lets out a shuddering breath. "What… what did you just say?"

"I didn't say anything," Lexa replies, the words slow off her tongue as she narrows her eyes. "I didn't say anything," she repeats, and her voice is stronger, her gaze hard.

"No, I- you-" She looks to Octavia for back-up, but all the speedster can do is shrug her shoulders in confusion. "You called me a Private First-Class." Lexa's breath hitches, her eyes widening, but just as quickly she shakes her head sharply and the clarity flushes from her pupils.

"I didn't say anything," she insists, and Clarke swallows hard, wiping at her nose with the back of her hand before she takes a deep breath to compose herself.

"Okay, okay. You didn't say anything. But, you can't send Octavia away, Lex, you can't."

"She'd be _safer_ ," and Lexa's voice is raw and desperate and it pulls sharply at Clarke's heart. "There's a 73% probability that SHIELD is solely after me. Therefore, there's a 73% probability that she would be safer apart from me than she is with me."

"Yeah? And what of that 27%, huh? If we separate, that's going to leave _someone_ with no back-up, no one to share watch with. We're safer together than we would be apart, okay? You'd still be following your orders then, no matter who SHIELD's target is." A bit of tension leaches out of Lexa at the words, and Clarke is able to take a full breath and ease the tightness in her chest. "And, anyways, it's kinda cocky to think they're just in it for you, Lex, ya know? What, you think you're such a better catch than the two of us?"

Lexa cocks her head to the side and arches an eyebrow.

"If you were serious about splitting up, you would have forced Octavia to run for it when I went shopping earlier."

"She tried that," Octavia pipes up. "I said I was not going anywhere without consulting you."

"Good. You're not going anywhere. We're sticking together. Hopefully tomorrow we'll get somewhere that actually has reception for that damn phone and then we'll arrange a pickup and this super fun camping trip will be over."

"We've gone through worse," Lexa chides, smirking, "remember Poland?"

"Do _you_?"

"It was so cold that we had to sleep huddled to-" Lexa jolts sharply, glances at Clarke with a mix of fear and confusion. "We had to- We-"

Clarke takes a hesitant step forward and lays her hand softly on Lexa's forearm. "Breathe, Lex." There's a rush of air at her back, Octavia's movements brisk as she gives them the site to themselves.

"I - I just-" She screws her eyes shut, and Clarke rubs circles over Lexa's wrist with the pad of her thumb.

"Just breathe, okay? You were talking about Poland?"

"No, I wasn't." She wrenches away from Clarke's touch and presses the heels of her palms to her eyes. "I wasn't I wasn't I wasn't," she mumbles fervently. " _I wasn't_."

Clarke wraps her fingers around Lexa's wrist and tugs her hands away from her face. "It was 1943, and we were going after a HYDRA base. Remember? We parachuted down into knee-deep snow under the cover of night. Remember? It was -30 when we set up camp, and no matter how many layers we pulled on the chill still went straight to our bones. Remember? When your fingers and toes were turning blue and my skin froze to my shield? Do you remember?"

Lexa shakes her head and tries to pull back, her eyes darting wildly, searching for an out. "I _don't_." But Clarke tightens her grip, goes up on her toes so they're eye to eye.

"You had all the signs of hypothermia and I had the serum in my veins, my blood running so hot I was basically a furnace. We burrowed down in the snow, used our packs to try and insulate the bottom of the tent, but it still wasn't enough, and-"

"I got a mouthful of your hair." Clarke wouldn't have realized Lexa had spoken if she hadn't been close enough to see the slight movement of her lips. "Your skin burned against my palms. I was so cold- so cold- so _cold_ \- I waited for you in the snow, I was so cold, it was _so cold_ , I waited so long and you never- You never _came_ -"

"Lex," she breathes, tears pricking at her eyes, "oh, _Lex_." She bites back a sob, her chest heaving. "I'd have found you, if I'd known. I'd have burned the world to the ground to find you."

"But you _didn't_ -"

"SHIELD's here!" Octavia slides to a halt in the centre of the campsite, dried blood streaked across her cheek from a slice to her temple. She's bent over and panting hard, and Clarke pats her back distractedly, more focused on the emotions flashing across Lexa's face.

"I would have," she snaps, her breath hitching in her throat as she reaches up to pull the shield off her back, "I swear to God, Lex, _I would have_."


	10. Chapter 10

**May 3, 2014**

\--

"We can go home."

_Niylah's voice echoes in her head and she sighs heavily, glancing at Maya and Jasper clutching tight to one another before turning on her heel and striding off the porch. The weight tugs at the centre of her chest, drawing her down, down, down, and her fists clench of their own accord, before she tenses her jaw and pries her fingers apart, forces Niylah straight back to the pit of nostalgia she'd managed to dig herself out of. The glint of an axe blade in the afternoon sun catches her eye, and she takes a deep breath and jogs towards the pile of logs waiting to be cut down into firewood._

_Raven joins her minutes later, the click of her brace deafening in the silence. Her fingers play along the haft of the axe before she pulls it free of the stump and weighs it in her hands. "Lincoln didn't say where he was going for answers?"_

_Clarke tears a log free of the bottom of the pile, sending wood rolling across the yard. "Sometimes my teammates don't tell me things," she mutters, her biceps flexing as she tears it apart with her bare hands. Splinters dig deep into her palms, but she ignores the sharp bursts of pain in favour of splitting another piece of lumber with a grunt. "I was kinda hoping Lincoln would be the exception."_

_Raven raises the axe over her head and pauses to shrug. "Yeah, give him time. We don't know what the Blake kid showed him." She swings hard, her knee buckling slightly as she buries the blade deep in the centre of the log with a thud._

_Clarke shifts backwards when Raven tugs the axe free, the blade swinging wildly through the air. She toes at the dirt for a moment, her hands balling up at her sides, and then her lip curls up into a sneer. "Earth's Mightiest Heroes," she laughs caustically, turning her gaze towards the farmhouse, where Maya has led Jasper out onto the porch and is gesturing between Raven and the barn. "Pulled us apart like cotton candy."_

_The axe stills at Raven's side, and she leans over, resting her weight on it as she surveys Clarke. "Seems like you walked away alright," she comments after a moment's silence._

_Clarke's head snaps up, and she pauses in the middle of pulling another piece of wood from the pile. "Is that a problem?" she bites back._

_Raven shrugs calmly, spinning the axe by the haft. "I don't trust a girl without a dark side. Call me old-fashioned."_

_Her hands tighten around the log in her grasp, the wood giving way beneath the pressure, breaking down into kindling. "Well, let's just say you haven't seen it yet."_

_\--_

**September 9, 2014**

_\--_

One second, the only sound in the clearing is Octavia trying to catch her breath. In the next, the campsite erupts in gunfire, bullets ricocheting off Clarke's shield. Lexa dives away from her, arms wrapping around Octavia's waist when she tackles her to the ground and covers her. Clarke tucks her body in behind her shield and scoots towards them as she tries to make out figures in the darkness. "Kill the fire," she hisses, catching sight of a silhouette in the tree line for a moment before the man seems to vanish into thin air. "We need to bring them back down to our level."

Lexa presses up so Octavia can roll out from underneath her, then scoops up a handful of soot-streaked snow and dashes it onto the ashes. The remaining flame sizzles when it is extinguished, and by the time the time the noise dies down, Octavia has jerked to her feet and then settled back in between them.

"Report, Blake?"

"Upwards of fifty-five assailants. Ten of those appear to be the same man, I'm not sure if they're clones or if it's something else."

"It's most likely Quint Madrox. The Multiple Man." Lexa keeps her eyes trained on the treeline as she speaks. "He's a powered SHIELD asset. Threat level: moderate."

Clarke nods slowly, shifting her shield slightly to block another barrage of bullets. "How do we take him out, Lex?”

"We need to incapacitate them in order to prevent duplication. Blunt force will just cause each Madrox to produce more dupes. To a point, anyway."

"How many copies can he make?"

"Around forty before he begins to weaken." Lexa unzips the backpack Clarke had procured for her on her shopping trip, digging through the contents for a moment before pulling a pair of canisters free and passing them off to the other two. "Aim for the eyes and avoid any blowback."

Clarke recognizes the label straight away, but her eyebrows still climb her forehead. "The wasp spray? Seriously?"

"Trust me," she growls, pulling handfuls of wadded-up paper towel from the front pocket of the bag. "And whenever you hear me shout 'down', hit the deck immediately, close your eyes, and cover your ears." She palms a lighter from her pocket and flicks it, the flame vibrant in the dark. " _Down_."

The chill of the snow is sharp against Clarke's cheek, and she turns her head to the side to spit out of mouthful of ash-flavoured snow. As she moves, her eyes flicker open, and the weight of that very poor decision hits instantly.

The flash illuminates the camp in bright white, and, even with her fingers shoved in her ears, the bang is close to deafening. She curls in on herself, a negative of the light imprinted on the insides of her eyelids, and presses the heels of her palms hard against her eyes. The pressure does nothing to alleviate the fireworks going off inside her head, and she swallows thickly in an attempt to ground herself before pressing a fist into the snow and pushing herself to her feet, wobbling and unsteady.

"Down!"

She drops harder this time, the impact forcing the air out of her lungs in a woosh, and pulls her shield overtop of her head. The blast is muted, but still sets her ears ringing, and she stumbles back to her feet and rubs blearily at her eyes. She tries to step forward and tangles her feet together, plunging back towards the ground and barely managing to catch herself on the edge of her shield.

When she finally gathers her wits about her and regains her feet, she finds half of the Madri curled up in the snow, blood leaking from their ears as they blindly fumble at their belts in haphazard attempts to remove their weaponry. One near Clarke's side frees a dart gun from a shoulder holster, but he nicks his finger with the tip of the projectile, and as a duplicate pops up at his side his eyes flicker shut and he crumples down into the sooty snow.

Octavia pops up beside Clarke, leaning over with her hands propped on her knees and panting heavily. "I used up the spray, and now I'm ineffective against them," she whispers as she moves to work out a kink in her neck, "I can't get up to a high enough speed that they don't realize I've hit them. Every time I land a punch, they're just using the kinetic energy to form another duplicate."

"Try harder," she growls, turning away and scanning for Lexa in the sea of Madri. There's a flash of silver in the moonlight, and three duplicates fly backwards, slamming into the ground with rag-doll limbs. "Get faster." Octavia nods grimly, and is off in a blur as Clarke sprints towards the group ganging up on Lexa.

"Down!"

She dives forward, fully prepared this time, fingers shoved in her ears and face turned away from the conflagration, and she’s able to regain her feet mere moments after the flashbang goes off. The majority of the conscious Madri are strewn across the ground, and Lexa pushes up to her feet and tosses aside her lighter with a smirk. "I'm having a blast tonight," she quips, raising her hand for Clarke to toss her the wasp spray she'd shoved behind her belt, "what about you?"

"I refuse to comment," Clarke shoots back with a wink, bringing up her shield to deflect a stray round and marveling at how familiar and yet uncomfortable it feels to have Lexa at her side throwing shit quips her way.

"Why, is my explosive personality too intimidating for you?"

"I'm just afraid getting distracted by you will blow up in my face," she laughs, ducking down and dragging Lexa with her by the strap of her shoulder holster as bullets whistle overhead.

Lexa rolls away from to her left and throws an arm across her face as she hits a Madrox directly in the eyes with the wasp spray. "Well, if it's gunfire you're anticipating, sounds like business is booming." She drives herself up and through the gap in the line of Madri formed by the man she'd downed, sprinting past them and heading for the cover of the treeline with Clarke hot on her heels. A dart catches her in the thigh, and she reaches down to rip it out without breaking her stride. She manages two more steps before she crumples to the ground with Madri closing in.

"Don't fucking touch her!" Clarke cocks her arm back and then launches her shield, catching the nearest Madrox in the chin and knocking him off his feet, blood spilling from his mouth as she takes up a defensive position over Lexa’s prone form. The impact forces a dupe into existence beside the dying man, and the shield deflects to catch the new Madrox in the shoulder. Her mouth drops open in horror as the shield continues to ricochet from duplicate to duplicate, sending Madri sprawling while even more copies pop up in their place.

The Madrox closest to her catches the shield as it rebounds back towards her, wincing when it slams into his hand and causes another duplicate to appear at his side. He tosses it onto the ground between them and rubs at his palm for a moment before waving his hand towards Lexa. "Just give us the asset and you can walk away."

Clarke steps on the edge of the shield, flipping it up into the air so she can catch it on her forearm. "You lay a hand on her and it'll be the last thing you ever do."

"That supposed to be a threat, Griffin?"

"No. That's a promise."

The dupe gives her a feral grin. "We're leaving here with her, Cap. Doesn't matter how many of me you think you'd be able to beat. I'll match that score and add one more."

"Gimme all forty of you," Clarke spits, moving to stand overtop of Lexa. A quick glance down is long enough to assess the soldier's vitals. She's still alive, still breathing, for now at least. "I can hold forty."

A Madrox in her peripherals snaps his fingers, and another pops up beside him. "You're working on old info, Cap-"

"-we're long past-"

"-the forty dupe limit."

Each duplicate claps their hands softly, and the crowd surrounding her doubles in an instant, all with fists raised and smirks plastered across their faces.

Octavia comes out of nowhere, her face blanching as she takes notice of the growing crowd of dupes. She tries to slide to a stop in front of Clarke, but instead she rolls over on her ankle, barely able to catch her balance and prevent herself from crumpling to the ground. She grabs at Clarke's shoulder to hold herself upright as she retches, then spits aside a mouthful of bile and fists her hand in Clarke's uniform. "Captain, something's wrong," she whimpers, grabbing at her free hand and pulling it up to the hollow of her neck. The speedster's heart beats hummingbird-fast against her fingertips as tears stream down her cheeks. "It's not- I can't- Just-," she spits out, all in a rush, and Clarke drags her out of the path of a bullet by the collar of her jacket before firing the shield at the Madrox who had pulled the trigger.

"Your powers aren't working," she clues in, her stomach heavy. "Shit, O, shit, fuck-"

"Language," Octavia chokes out with a pale attempt at a laugh, her voice catching hard in her throat and devolving into a coughing fit.

Clarke turns for a split second to catch her shield as it rebounds back towards her. It glances off her forearm and angles up, slamming into her face and setting free a fountain of blood. She curses loudly as she corrals it, and then spins back towards Octavia, but she's halfway across the clearing, struggling in a Madrox's tight grasp.

"Stand down," he drawls, "or the girl gets it."

Clarke shakes her head firmly, blood dripping into the snow with the movement. "You wouldn't- _SHIELD_ wouldn't-"

The Madrox wrenches his arm tighter around Octavia's neck and brings his hand up to her mouth. "Wanna hazard a guess as to what would happen if I duplicated inside your friend here, Captain?"

"You can't do that, you're bluffing." Clarke wipes at her bloody nose with the back of her hand, the gesture only serving to smear more red streaks across her face. "It's a bluff."

"Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Want to wager her life on a fifty-fifty chance?" The Madrox forces his hand between Octavia's lips, his eyes flashing. "One snap of my fingers and today gets a little bit more explosive."

"You're out of dupes. I punched this guy in the face and nothing happened." She kicks at the shoulder of a Madrox sprawled at her feet, then stumbles back when a duplicate appears at his side.

"That's what happens when I absorb some of my weaker dupes." He flexes his hand, Octavia tugging woozily at his forearm. "I get a nice little boost. Careful there, girlie, don't want me accidentally tearing you to shreds, now, do ya?"

"Don't-" Clarke reaches out a hand, then pulls her arm away when she realizes how close she is to a Madrox. "Don't. Your fight's not with her."

"There's only one thing that'll get me to stop."

"And that would be?"

"Give me the Asset."

"Never," she hisses, straightening her spine and clenching her jaw as she cocks the shield back. "The three of us are leaving here together."

"Don't shoot the messenger, but that's not gonna be how this plays out. I go back with the asset, or I go back with this speedster's head. Or what's left of it. Those are your only options now, Cap, you've used up all my leniency. Jaha doesn't appreciate people failing to complete their missions."

Clarke glances from the shield to Lexa, and back again, shield, Lexa, shield, Lexa, SHIELD, _Lexa_ , before dropping the disc and kneeling at the soldier's side. She bends over Lexa, her hands tugging at the buttons of the girl's jacket as she whispers fervently in her ear, "I'm sorry, she'll be fast enough, she has to, _I_ have to, I'm sorry". Her fist closes around the grip of the pistol strapped tight against Lexa's side, and it feels eerily _natural_ when she pulls it free and cocks it. The click echoes loud in her head.

She stands smoothly and turns, leveling the gun directly at the Madrox. "Your understanding of my priorities seems to be rather skewed," she states, voice haughty in a brave attempt to disguise the shake of her hands. "Your mission is to do whatever it takes to take her back, yeah? Well, Lexa's safety is my mission, _she's_ my mission, and as long as she's in jeopardy I'll do whatever it takes to protect her."

His eyes widen, and he almost pulls his hand all the way from between Octavia's lips in his shock. "Including killing the kid?"

"I'll tear down anyone who stands in my way." The trigger weight is so, so, _so_ light, and the Madrox's mouth drops open almost in slow motion as the bullet rips through the air. "Innocence be damned.”

The Madrox rips his hand free of Octavia's mouth and stumbles back as the bullet slams into the bewildered speedster's left shoulder. His movement is not nearly fast enough, and he crumples, blood fountaining from his lips, as his duplicate looks on in horror. Clarke chambers another bullet and levels the pistol at the newest Madrox as he drops to his knees beside Octavia and presses his hands over the entry wound.

"We were only supposed to incapacitate her," he blubbers, tears streaming down his cheeks as blood spurts through the gaps between his fingers with every beat of Octavia's heart. "He was _bluffing_."

Clarke bites down on her lower lip, hard enough to split the skin, taking him in for a moment before she pulls the trigger. The Madrox hits the ground with a gentle thud, and she keeps the gun pointed at him, waiting for the duplicate to appear.

Nothing happens.

She stares down at the gun in confusion, her brain working overtime, then turns and surveys the campsite. There's no movement from any of the duplicates. She shifts her hold on the pistol grip, eyes darting from side to side as she sinks into a protective stance over Lexa's body. "Who's out there?"

Silence.

"Show yourself!"

There's a loud _woosh_ , and Raven drops out of the sky and lands in a crouch in front of them, pointing a palm repulsor directly at Lexa.

Clarke hurls herself between them before the engineer has a chance to prime her weapon. "What the hell are you doing, Reyes?" She lands a hand on the front of Raven's suit and shoves hard, sending her tripping over her own feet and stumbling backwards. "If you touch her, I'll fucking kill you." Her voice is shaking, but the gun is steady in her hand when she aims it at Raven's chest. It occurs to her that shooting the armour would be kind of pointless, and she readjusts, pointing the barrel at Raven's healthy knee.

"You don't understand, Griffin!" Raven flips up her face shield and gestures wildly at Lexa. "She's leading SHIELD straight to you guys. She's been playing you this entire time!"

Clarke's finger tightens on the trigger. "She's on our side," she growls.

"You were supposed to be on that Quinjet with us. Let me ask you one question. Whose idea was it for you guys not to make that launch?"

Her breath catches in her throat. "You don't know-"

"She told you to turn back, didn't she? Probably sold you some bullshit about it being safer, am I getting warm? That was her plan all along, to get you alone, or as close to it, as she could."

"Then why am I still alive? Huh? Why am I standing here, while there are a couple dozen SHIELD corpses out in the forest?"

Her jaw works open and closed for a moment, a fish out of water, then she reaches up and slams her face shield down. "I'm still trying to work that out," she spits, her voice echoing through her helmet as she tosses Clarke an earpiece. "Give me a couple of minutes and I'll be sure to get back to you."

She turns on her heel and stalks through the snow towards where Monty and Anya are hunched over Octavia's body, working fervently while Bellamy paces around them, a hand pressed to his mouth and red sparks flickering over his skin. "Peters, what's the situation?"

Anya doesn't look up from the entry wound encircled with black ink. "It tore open her aorta, she'd be dead if this SHIELD flunkie hadn't tried to stop the bleeding."

Bellamy snaps his fingers and rushes towards Octavia, shoving Monty and Anya away to give himself room to slam his palms flat on her shoulders. Flames lick over the front of Octavia's shirt, glinting off the smears of blood. A flash of white obscures Clarke's vision, and when her eyes clear Bellamy is raising his head.

"It did not hit anything critical," he corrects, his voice hard. His hands shake where he has Octavia's cheeks cupped in his palms.

"It didn't hit anything critical," Anya confirms without a second glance towards Octavia.

"You just said it'd punctured her aorta," Clarke chips in. "Which is it?"

Anya gives her a confused look and opens her mouth to reply, but Bellamy is quicker. "Nobody said anything about her aorta," he growls. "Nothing critical was wounded, despite your best efforts, Captain." He wipes his hands on his pants and gestures towards Octavia. "Can you treat her injury, please?" he asks Monty, his voice low and hard as he shoots a piercing glare at Clarke and then stalks off into the dark.

\--

The ride back to New York is weighed down by a heavy silence.


	11. Chapter 11

**April 25, 1959**

\--

_The Mission Objective raises his wine glass to his lips, and they inhale slowly, one-two-three, their finger tensing on the trigger as they centre his temple in the sight of their rifle._

_Red blooms from his left breast, staining his shirt as the goblet slips from his fingers, and they pull back, disassembling their rifle with steady hands as they trace the trajectory of the shot. The angle indicates it had come from one of the balconies on the opposite side of the room, and the slight ripple of the curtain confirms. They store their rifle in their pack and sling their bag over their shoulder before slipping out into the chaos on an interception path._

_They reach the street and stand facing the building, their eyes sweeping the gothic arches as civilians stream out around them, a panicked herd of cattle. There is a figure pressed up against a flying buttress, braced such as to keep them out of view from inside the building. They finger the mousegun resting in the inside pocket of their jacket, ease it free and edge along the sidewalk as the lithe figure darts towards the edge of the building and leaps down into the shadows._

_\--_

_Anastasia slips into the safehouse, fumbling blindly for the lamp on the nearest side table. "[I expected you ten minutes ago]," she comments to the darkness, and then the shaded bulb illuminates the hard lines of the assassin seated in one of the kitchen chairs._

_The Soldier turns a dagger over and over in her hands as she glares up at Anastasia. "[He was my target]," she says harshly, embedding the point of the blade in the arm of the chair._

_"[He was_ mine _, soldier]." She paces forward and covers the Soldier's hand on the knife with one of her own. The girl flinches, then composes herself, leaning back into the chair with an ease that doesn't reach her eyes. "[He has been for four years. You were there when I was given the assignment]." She tugs the Soldier's fingers free of the hilt, places the weapon on the floor and kicks it out of sight. "[He was not to be disposed of by you]." The Soldier stiffens beneath her, stays taut when she straddles her lap and loops an arm around her neck, leans in close. "[It's been four years, you bastard. Where were you]?" The Soldier's pulse pounds away against her skin, and the girl swallows hard, her tongue darting out to wet her lips._

_"[He was my target]," she repeats, stubborn as ever. "[Who sent you to interfere]?"_

_Anastasia rests a finger on the Soldier's lips, fists her hand in the front of the girl's jumpsuit and tugs her closer. She draws the tips of her fingers across the Soldier's cheek, cups her jaw in her hands, closes the last inches between them, and kisses her._

_It's all too familiar when the Soldier's hands slip up the back of her shirt, the metal fingers grazing her skin, sending shivers up the column of her spine. But then the digits dig into her back and the girl pulls free of the kiss. "[Who sent you]?" she growls, and there's confusion in her eyes._

_She frees her pistol from her ankle holster, presses it to the Soldier's temple. "[I came of my own accord. Heard you were nearby, thought I'd come say hello]."_

_The Soldier presses into the barrel, eyebrows furrowed. "[Is this how you greet everyone]?"_

_"[Only when I'm not sure who's going to reply]." She moves back off the Soldier's lap, keeps her weapon trained on the girl as she boosts herself up onto the kitchen counter. "[Where were you]?"_

_The Soldier stands and advances towards her, removing another knife from a thigh sheath. "[Who are you]?"_

_"[Who are_ you _]?"_

_The Soldier stops in her tracks, mouth opening and closing as her eyes dart back and forth. "I- I- [The query is irrelevant. Who are you]?" She nears Anastasia, presses the blade of her knife to her neck as her breath hitches in her throat._

_"[It doesn't matter who I am]." She swallows hard, her hand rising to the Soldier's wrist as the blade slices through her skin like butter, a trail of blood gliding down curve of her neck. The gun wavers in her grip. "[They won't ever let you remember me]."_

_"[Why did you kill the Mission Objective]?"_

_She grits her teeth, steadies her gun. "[I had my orders]." She pushes hard against the Soldier's shoulder, ducks away as her blade swings wide, then sends a gunshot rattling off the metal prosthetic._

_The panels in the Soldier's arm shift and whir, moving the damaged plate out of commission, and she brings the arm back up in front of her as Anastasia abandons the empty gun and dives back behind the couch. She scrabbles beneath the furniture as the Soldier's steps draw closer, and her hands close around leather bands. She pulls them out, tugs them tight around her wrists, and rolls back into the open. She falls into position on one knee and sends a projectile flying from her bracelet._

_The Soldier hits the ground with a thud._

_The Widow gathers her bugout bag from the back of the bedroom closet. She spares one last glance for the unconscious girl before she tosses the bag out onto the fire escape and follows it, disappearing into the dark._

\--

**September 10, 2014**

\--

Anya holds Clarke back by the shoulder when they arrive at Avengers Tower, watching silently as the gurney Lexa's been strapped to is wheeled towards the elevator with a half-armoured Raven by her side. "She's not going to do anything her, Griffin."

"I wouldn't be so sure about that."

"If she were, then in all likelihood she'd get me to torture her first." She tugs on Clarke's arm, pulling her down one of the long hallways. She vaguely recalls it as the direction to the sparring room. "She'll be fine."

"And if she's not?"

"Then you'll make Raven answer for it, I'm sure." She pushes open the double doors and leads Clarke into the gym. "Clothes off, Cap."

"Not even gonna buy me dinner first, Volkoff? I'm not really that kind of girl." Anya levels a piercing stare at her and Clarke raises her hands warily. "Okay, okay, but really, for all you know I could've been starving out there in the woods. I'm not _actually_ a god, I do need sustenance."

"You know the kitchen is Avengers Central after a battle. You've still got a hell of a lot of angry energy to burn off before you're going to be okay to be around people, and it's probably best we keep Bellamy away from you for a while, so we're gonna play some fight club." She cracks her knuckles and then lets out a short laugh. "And if you'd somehow managed to starve yourself out there when you had a full bugout bag, then you'd deserve the beating I'm about to give you even more."

Clarke nods shortly and tugs at the buckles of her shield harness, pulling it loose and slipping it from her shoulders before tossing it aside. "Same rules as usual?"

"Yup. No talking about it, no running off to bitch if you get hurt, no holds barred." She holds out a fist, and Clarke pounds it with her own before bending to unlace her boots. She finishes stripping down to her ACU undershirt and silkies, her bare feet sinking into the padded floor, and then steps towards Anya.

The spy shifts quickly within her range and lands a one-two punch to her jaw before darting back, her loosely-clenched hands protecting her face. Clarke rubs her jaw with her forearm and then presses forward, aiming a lazy kick at Anya's leg. "Do we really have to do this?" she grumbles, pulling back and bouncing restlessly on her toes. "I could just go take a nap instead. I've had a bit of a rough week."

Anya lunges forward again, sending a kick at Clarke's abdomen that knocks the unprepared soldier off balance. She follows it with a couple punches towards the side of Clarke's head that she manages to throw both arms up to block. "We go until I say otherwise."

Clarke swings a fist hard at Anya's head, and she ducks beneath the punch and hooks a foot around the bend of Clarke's knee. "Well, that sounds a bit unfair."

"You can talk about fairness when you stop leading strays back to the Tower and putting me between a rock and a hard place." Anya throws a couple punches that Clarke has no trouble pushing away, but she realizes a moment later, when Anya has her fingers laced behind Clarke's head, that the blows were ruses.

The knee to her face shatters her nose.

She spits aside a mouthful of blood and shoves Anya backwards to give herself a moment to regain composure. "She's not a stranger. She's my best friend."

Anya peers over at her for a second, pursing her lips. "When do you think I got my moniker?"

"I thought it was Jaha gave it to you." Clarke shifts forward, taking note of the tension in Anya's body as she cocks back a fist.

The spy laughs. "I adopted the name 'Black Widow' _long_ before I came to SHIELD, and oh, how I earned it." She blocks Clarke's punch with her forearm and grabs her elbow, throwing the soldier over her hip and rolling so Clarke's pinned beneath her hips. "The girls in the Red Room, I chewed them up and spat them out. Most of them didn't survive me, but the Winter Soldier kept coming back for more."

Clarke torques her hips and regains the top, pressing Anya down into the floor with her thumbs driving hard against the spy's collarbones. "That's a fucking lie," she says, drawing close enough that their noses brush. Anya's eyes flicker shut as she moves her hands up Clarke's arms, and then a fist closes tight at her collar and she's flipping over the spy's head and landing flat on her back, the breath forced hard from her lungs.

"Vienna, Prague, Odessa. She stole targets out from under me, and I did the same right back. We'd meet in shadowy hotel rooms and my name wouldn't slip from her lips because she never _knew_ me. But we always fell together, we were always inextricably linked. There was an old Soviet saying. If Fall ends, Winter is coming. We were a team, a marriage between two fingers of the Soviet fist. Attack one, and the other would crush you."

"Don't talk about her like she belongs to you."

"Oh, Clarke, but pieces of her do." Anya leaps to her feet and holds a hand out that Clarke brushes away with a grumbled curse. "I watched them wipe her, over and over, watched every last vestige of memory cleaned from her mind. I watched her forget me after every mission, and then I fought to give her back something, _anything_ every time they pulled her out of the freezer." She bounces on the balls of her feet as Clarke glares at her. "I know her intimately."

"You know the _Soldier_ ," she spits back. "Don't you dare pretend to know _Lexa_."

"They're one and the same."

"They're _not_. You should know that most of all."

"They are, because the Soldier's all that's _left_." As Clarke moves to throw a strike, Anya lands a kick to the side of her head, and instead of landing the punch she uses her time to dart back out of range. "Lexa's been dead since the war, Clarke, accept that."

"Not anymore, not since we escaped," Clarke spews out, the words all jumbled. "She's starting to remember, okay?"

"Is she starting to remember, or are you forcing the memories into her head, making her the girl you think she should be? Because there's a vast difference in the two."

"I- I- I don't know," she replies, her chin sinking to her chest. "I'm not sure."

"Well, figure it _out_ ," Anya shouts, landing another elbow to Clarke's nose and throwing her off. They stumble apart, the soldier nursing her shattered nose as the spy rubs at her bruised biceps. "You need to _tell me_ what you see in her that's not a weapon! That's Lexa Callaghan and not some personality she's throwing up there to work you. Because that girl has looked me straight in the eye and fired a bullet into my gut with absolutely no remorse, because that's what it took for her to complete the mission. Because every time they thaw her out, there's less of her there, less of the girl, more of the asset. She's a _pistol_ , Clarke, she's a _loaded_ _gun_ , and there's only two ways to make a gun safe. We need to lock her up, or we need to destroy her."

"The safety of the weapon is in the hand that wields it. We're not HYDRA. If we don't use her the way they do, then we can try to dig her back out of there. Without killing her, without icing her." She launches herself forward through the air and tackles Anya at the waist.

"And then what? What happens when HYDRA takes control of her again? When she can't tell the difference between a bump in the night and an armed enemy? She can't be reformed, not without casualties. Is it worth it to you? The wreckage she could cause, the damage she could do? Is her life worth a hundred, a thousand others?"

"It's worth everything to me if there's even the _possibility_ I can get her back." She drops her hands to Anya's throat, presses tight to cut off airflow. Bruises bloom around the pads of her fingers. "It's Lexa out there, Ahn, it's _Lexa_." Anya's hips buck up into Clarke as she tears anxiously at the soldier's hands, but Clarke keeps pressing down, cutting off her airflow. Anya's face is wet with drops of liquid, and it takes Clarke a long moment to realize she's crying. " _It's Lexa_ ," she sobs, her hands loosening from Anya's neck as she collapses down against the spy's chest.

Anya loops her arms around Clarke's torso and pulls the shuddering soldier tighter against her. "Hey, shh, it's okay. We'll figure it out, I promise," she whispers, her voice rough as she sucks in sharp breaths. "But you're letting your feelings overwhelm your sense of obligation to this team. You shot Octavia to save her, and she'd be _dead_ if Bell hadn't been with us."

"It was the right decision," she replies, fisting her hands in the front of Anya's jacket and dropping her head. "It was the only way I could see to keep her safe."

"So you'd give Octavia's life for Lexa's?"

Clarke's cheeks go bright red, and she tucks her chin tight into her chest. "I missed," she mumbles. "I was aiming for her shoulder, and I _missed_."

"Clarke..."

Clarke chokes back a sob. "I'm always going to choose her first, but I thought I could save them both. I thought I could, but I'd've failed." She hiccups before scrubbing roughly at her eyes with the sleeve of her uniform. She turns her head back and buries her face in the crook of Anya's neck. "I can't lose her again," she mumbles into the creased fabric of Anya's top, her tears running hot down her cheeks. "I wouldn't survive it."

"You know Raven's not going to hurt her, right?" she murmurs in something approaching a soothing tone, reaching a hand up to stroke absently at Clarke's hair.

"The Winter Soldier murdered her parents," Clarke whispers, her voice catching in her throat. "SHIELD initially thought Daniel and Isabella Reyes died in a car accident, but I went through Jaha's files on her. It wasn't an accident."

Anya rolls Clarke off of her and climbs quickly to her feet. "If she knows that, then she’s not going to hurt her," she says, strapping her holsters back around her torso and heading for the door. “She's going to _kill_ her."


	12. Chapter 12

**September 10, 2014**

\--

Raven pats DUM-E as she passes him on the way into the lab. Anything to delay having to look closer at the body being shuttled from the stretcher over to the surgical chair set up in the centre of the room. She pulls her hair back into a tight ponytail, snaps goggles down over her eyes, and busies herself setting up trays of tools as her lab assistants vacate the space.

It's only once they've closed the door behind them that she approaches the chair and takes a better look at the woman. On her orders, they've rolled Callaghan's blood-drenched jumpsuit down to her waist and removed her undershirt, leaving her in a sports bra with the seam where prosthetic met flesh on full display.

She inhales sharply, bringing a hand to her chest as her stomach rolls. She still looks away in disgust whenever she catches the reflection of the ring of scarring on her sternum in the mirror, the testament to her fight, her survival, and it's not half as bad as this. The gnarled scarring around the socket of Callaghan's left arm is thicker, more invasive, and Raven can't help but mull over how that was _inflicted_ upon her. That not allowing the connection to heal properly had to have been a _choice_ HYDRA had made. Not the effect of inaction but a conscious decision.

Raven squeezes her eyes shut for a moment before turning to tug a portable x-ray machine towards the chair. As it scans the Soldier's arm and torso, she digs at her temples with the pads of her thumbs and lets out a long shuddering breath. The arm is the pinnacle of current engineering, a goddamn work of _art_. Or it _would_ be, if HYDRA hadn't performed this hack job to graft it onto Callaghan. Ever since the footage of DC had come out, she'd wanted a chance at it, but not like this. Not with an assassin attached.

The x-ray finishes and a 3D hologram of Callaghan's hardware pops up in the air in front of her. She spins it with one finger, scanning it idly, before the bottom drops out of her stomach. She pinch-zooms in on the Soldier's back, highlighting the (what she really fucking hopes is at least) surgical-grade steel that her body's chock-full of and trying to hold in a rather loud curse. (She fails miserably).

Most of Callaghan's shoulder girdle and rib cage has been replaced with metal counterparts. All the better to balance out the weight of a fucking giant metal arm, she supposes. The welding of the internal joins is shoddy, and where screws connect plate to bone, the heads haven't been sanded down. There are thick swathes of internal scarring surrounding the joins, testament to the level of pain the soldier must experience with _any_ movement, and Raven shudders at the thought.

She moves on from the hellscape that is Callaghan's torso, spattered with heavy black bruises, and spins the hologram arm around in front of her. The scanner hadn't penetrated the outer layer of the arm, and she balls the projection together and lobs it towards the hologram basketball net on the opposite side of the lab. Three-pointer. Nice.

She takes a seat then, next to the chair, and slides her hands over the surface of the arm, poking and prodding at the joins, trying to find something that will give. It takes a combination of a slide, twist, and squeeze in concert (probably a two-person job, but she manages it with persistence) to open up an access panel and get a look at the arm's innards.

She can't stop the long, low whistle sneaking out.

It's _gorgeous._

There's a layer of electronic components directly beneath the plates, suspended in gel over top of a hydraulic skeleton. Raven prods at the gel, sparing a glance towards the unconscious soldier's face before looking back towards the open paneling of the metal arm. At first glance, the circuitry itself seems on par with equipment she's produced as of late, but there's an image that clears in her head, of Anya tucked up half-naked in her bed, mocking the latest ReyPad for being a couple months behind the newest Russian technology. "I estimate that Callaghan's prosthesis hasn't been updated since prior to Project Insight," she dictates, DUM-E whirring quietly when he records her voice, and then she leans forward with her elbows propped on her knees as she taps the head of her wrench against her pursed lips. "If my knowledge of the date of the project's inception is accurate, that is."

She sets the wrench aside and slides the paneling back into place on Callaghan's forearm before feeling at the joins of the soldier's upper arm. It only takes her a few moments to expose the wiring, now she's had practice, and it's about two seconds longer before she spots what she's looking for.

She hooks a finger under the single matte black strip of metal and tugs it lightly, following it up with a sharper pull when it comes loose in her grasp. Another tug reveals a fingernail-sized transmitter, and she pulls the entirety of the strip free and wraps it around her fingers.

Callaghan convulses.

Raven jumps backwards at the sudden movement, her legs getting tangled up in the bars of her stool and sending her plunging to the ground with a yelp. She lies there for a moment, just long enough to gather her wits about her, and then she climbs back to her feet and peers down at the soldier. Callaghan's eyes bug out when she meets Raven's gaze, and she strains hard against the leather straps holding her to the chair, pure fear clearly evident in her wide pupils.

Raven reaches up and slides the goggles up, and Callaghan calms slightly, sinking back down into the chair as her eyes dart around, taking the room in. "There was some damage to your prosthetic," she says, the lie smooth off her tongue. "I'm repairing it."

Callaghan swallows hard. "Mission status?"

"If you're talking about Mission Protect Octavia, you did a pretty shit job of it, considering she's lying in the medbay with a gunshot wound to her chest."

Callaghan flinches and screws her eyes shut, making herself as small as she can in the chair and holding still. After a few seconds, she cracks one eye up and peers up at Raven.

"What are you- Oh." She pushes her stool away from the chair, drops her tools and raises her hands, empty palms facing the Soldier. "I'm not going to fucking punish you," she mutters, and there's a sharp pain in her chest when Callaghan's shoulders slump out of her defensive posture. "Chill. You got her back alive. Job's over, Callaghan."

"Negative." Callaghan turns her head to follow Raven's movement as the engineer paces across the lab.

"How do you figure that?"

"No time or location parameters were provided. Thus, the Mission Objective must require continuous protection." She states it matter-of-fact, like it's normal, and then it hits Raven to that her it _might well be_. She is an assassin, after all. A weapon. She fiddles absently with a ratchet as she avoids meeting Callaghan's eyes, and then the tool slips from her grasp and hits the floor with a resounding _clang_ when the lab door opens wide.

\--

The door swings open, the handle crunching against the wall as the blonde shoves through it. Her brow is furrowed, _rage,_ and she storms towards them with her fists balled at her sides. The Mission Director is at her shoulder, grabbing the blonde by the elbow and holding her back from the woman who talks too fast as she waves her hands wildly and attempts to encroach on her personal space.

"Let her up!" The blonde wrests herself free of the Mission Director's hold and grabs the woman who talks too fast by her collar, backing her up until her hips thud against the metal worktable. "Don't pretend you don't see what's wrong with this picture!"

The woman who talks too fast shakes the blonde off and sets her shoulders back, schools her facial expressions, _control._  "I understand your issues, but I'm not putting my staff at risk just because you think she's still your best friend _." Blonde. Ally. Friend...? Confirm, friend._ The one who talks too fast settles back down beside her arm, taking a moment to reorganize her tools into straight lines as the blonde crosses her arms in front of her chest and glares at them.

The Mission Director lays a hand lightly on the blonde's shoulder and leans forward to whisper into her ear. She catches "command" and "obey" and a string of names she can't match to faces in the files in her head, and then, though the blonde shakes her head, the Mission Director approaches her.

"[Primary mission report]," she says softly, after she's pulled a chair near her head and straddled it. She leans forward, resting her chin on her forearms where they lie on the back of the chair. Her eyes are wide, _kind...? Does not compute_ , and one hand moves towards her before the Mission Director catches herself and withdraws it swiftly.

"[Mission imperative followed as ordered. Confirm mission status]."

"[Primary mission successful, mission objective secured]." The Mission Director glances back over her shoulder towards the blonde, and then grits her teeth and nods once. "[Looks like your secondary mission is still relevant, though]." The Mission Director reaches out and ruffles her hair, and she shirks away from the touch as far as the bonds allow.

"[Confirmed]."

"[Excellent. Stand down, soldier]." The Mission Director nods and stands from the chair, linking her hands together and stretching them up overhead before she turns to the woman who talks too fast. "It's safe for you to release her. She won't hurt you."

"I'll believe that when I see it."

"Reyes, let her go," the blonde growls, her fists curling, knuckles going white with the strain. "She's done nothing to you."

"Only 'cause I'm not stupid enough to give her the opportunity to."

"So, what, you're just going to keep her locked up in your lab for the rest of her life?"

"If that's what it takes to keep my hires safe."

"McIntyre is going to love you calling her a hire," the Mission Director chips in with a wide grin. The one who talks too fast does not seem to return the sentiment. "If that gets back to her, then it's not Alexandra you should be keeping an eye out for." _Alexandra?_

"Shut it, Volkoff."

"What if I just... there. Text sent. You enjoy that confrontation."

"You're an asshole."

"You say that like it comes as a surprise to you."

"How about you two quit flirting and get back to the bit where Reyes frees Lexa before I do it for her." _Lexa?_

"Yeah, Reyes, how about that?" The Mission Director taps the surgical chair by her elbow. "You gonna let her loose or not?"

The one who talks too fast sighs, and for once stays silent longer than ten seconds as she slides the metal plating back into place. Then she inhales deeply and looks up at the blonde. "She stays in the medbay overnight to ensure there's nothing fishy going on with her programming, and then she'll be confined to your quarters. FRIDAY will monitor her 24/7, right, buddy?"

A disembodied, accented voice replies "Confirm." The tone is such that, if it had been one of the women speaking, she would have expected the word to be accompanied by an eye roll.

"And then we'll go from there. Capisce?"

"Understood," the blonde spits, striding forward and crouching down in front of her. She's careful not to touch her when she rests her hands on the arm of the chair. "Hang in there, Lex." _Lex??_ "It's only for a couple more hours." Nodding seems the right move to make, so she does so, and the blonde gives her a minute smile in return. "I'll be back tomorrow morning, okay?"

"Confirm."

The blonde's face falls, _upset_ , but she still nods, glances towards the one who talks too quickly for a moment before heading towards the door. "Reyes, if anything happens to her-"

"I'll end up at the bottom of the Hudson in a bag of rocks. Don't worry, Capsicle, I got it."

She tracks the blonde with her eyes as she leaves, and the woman glances back towards her four times, looking away quickly each time their eyes meet.

\--

Raven swings the lab door shut behind her and enables the handprint lock as she takes one last look at the Soldier through the window. She tilts her head forward to rest her forehead against the door and exhales slowly, her hands shaking until she forces them deep into her pockets, her fingers curling around the still-warm test tubes resting there. "Okay, okay, okay," she mumbles under her breath, spinning to head towards her ancillary lab and stumbling directly into Anya. "Oh, didn't realize you were still hanging around." She tugs a tube out of her pocket and waves it through the air. "Staying to watch the master at work?"

"I need you to come with me." She raises an eyebrow and awaits explanation, but the spy shakes her head, turns on her heel and heads down the hall. Raven rolls her eyes and hurries to catch up, matching Anya stride for stride once she reaches her side.

She stays quiet until they're back on board the Quinjet, tracking bloody footprints across the rubber flooring. "What are we doing?"

Anya doesn't reply, instead tugs Clarke's bugout bag out from where she'd left it tucked under one of the seats and tears open the zippers, emptying the contents out onto the deck of the ship. She tosses aside energy bar wrappers and first aid equipment and grabs the familiar brown folder, crumpled into a ball and packed away in the very bottom of the bag. Her hands shake as she flattens it out over her knee, but she takes a deep breath and the tension ebbs from her limbs.

"Cap bring us back souvenirs? Other than the homicidal android, of course."

Anya lifts the folder briefly before slapping it back down onto her knee. "There's this. But what's in here is a thread you might not want to pull on."

"That's the Winter Soldier file." It's not a question, but Anya responds with a nod anyways. Raven holds her hand out. "Gimme, Ahn."

"You're sure?"

She nods resolutely, and tugs the folder free of Anya's clenched fingers. "Positive."

Anya slings the rucksack on her back and moves towards Raven, resting a hand on her shoulder. "You read that, and you won't be able to go back to a time before it," she murmurs, lips close to Raven's ear. "And I can promise you, you're not going to like what you find."

"She's sleeping two floors away from my bedroom. I'd rather I know everything I can about her _before_ I wake up with a knife to my throat." Raven flips open the folder and thumbs quickly through the pages. "Whether or not the info's good."

Anya sighs and steps down onto the loading ramp. She spins on her heel and tugs at the strap of the bugout bag. "Just, promise you'll come talk to us before you act on anything you read, okay?"

"What, scared I'm going to murder her in cold blood? I thought that was her job." Anya just shifts her weight from foot to foot as she holds eye contact, and Raven's mouth drops open. "Wait, shit, you _are_. What's the hell's in here, Ahn?"

"Just read it, Reyes. Then come find me after."


	13. Chapter 13

**September 10, 2014**

\--

Clarke's fresh out of the shower, her hair toweled dry and clad in a worn-out shirt and baggy pair of sweatpants (seemed Raven had trucked in the contents of her old DC apartment), and headed towards the kitchen when she runs smack into Anya.

"Good shower?" the spy tosses over her shoulder as she looks aimlessly from cabinet to cabinet.

"Nice to be clean and warm, at least." Clarke idly runs a hand through her hair, her eyes following Anya around the kitchen. "What'd you and Reyes get up to while I was washing up?" She leans across the counter, waggling her eyebrows, and Anya shoves her palm into Clarke's face and pushes her away before peeling off towards the fridge. She yelps and makes a show of rubbing at her nose, though the bruising from earlier has all but vanished.

"We were just resetting the Quinjet. Never know how soon we'll need to get up in the air again. You forgot your bugout bag on board, so I took the liberty of tossing it in your room for you."

Clarke nods slowly and kicks at the carpeting. "Thanks." She turns and busies herself looking through the kitchen cabinets, then stops in front of one, a jar of peanut butter in hand, and drops her chin to her chest. "What... what did you say to Lexa? In there? She was... different. Less… present, I guess."

"Nothing relevant to you." She retrieves a bag of grapes from the crisper and tosses one in a high arc, catching it easily in her mouth. "It was all mission-adjacent."

"Am I her mission, then? Because you both looked at me like I was."

"We were talking about Octavia." Anya sends a grape pinging off Clarke's cheek. "I clarified that getting her here alive was all that was required of that assignment." She chews on a handful of the fruit, crinkling her nose thoughtfully. "You'll like that, then, that she's inactive again."

"I like that we're not _using_ her." She pops a couple of slices of bread in the toaster before turning to face Anya, fiddling distractedly with the lid of the peanut butter jar. "But if the trade-off for that is that she withdraws back into the Soldier? I don't know, I-"

"It's a whole different situation." Anya stretches across the counter to pull the jar out of Clarke's hands and set it down on the marble. "You guys out in the woods, relying on staying low-tech to survive, probably felt a lot like it did during the war, right? It probably gave her a touchstone, helped her dig out some of the stuff they tried to erase. And then she woke up strapped down in an unfamiliar lab with an unfamiliar face looming over her. If she's at all in there, then she's likely still trying to get her wits about her. You're just going to need to give her time."

"We don't _have_ time. SHIELD's gonna find us again, I'm surprised they're not here already. They're going to want her back."

"We're not going to give her up. None of us, not even Reyes."

"It'd make me feel a hell of a lot better if I heard that out of her mouth."

"You can't blame her for being a bit hesitant to bring her into the fold, Clarke. There's a pretty good chance she's been playing you, and even if she's _not_ activated by SHIELD, she's still a danger to everyone in this building."

"What do you mean, playing me? It's been Lexa in there, not the Soldier, at least for the last couple of days."

"Do you know how we found you in Indiana?" Clarke shrugs, plating her toast and rifling through the drawers to find a knife, her chest constricting. "Following _her_. Raven hacked into SHIELD servers and pulled GPS data that she'd been sending them. She led us and them right to you."

"She fought them," she spits, her hands clenching around the peanut butter jar. The lid splits under her fingers. "Everyone that came after us, she fought them all."

"If Raven's correct, then she was operating under two sets of directives. The ones I gave would've overridden any that came before. She'd have protected Octavia at all costs, even if she had a standing order from SHIELD to surrender to any of their operatives. Even if it meant killing the agents she called to pick her up."

"She didn't-"

"She led them to you. Whether or not it was on purpose, it's the truth."

\--

**September 11, 2014**

\--

Raven's nowhere to be found when Clarke arrives at the lab to pick up Lexa. She struggles with the door for a minute or two, tugging on the handle hard enough to warp the metal, and then presses her back up against it and sinks down to the floor. She knew it was too good to be true.

And then Raven comes out of thin air, grabbing her by the front of her shirt and slamming her against the wall. Her eyes are rimmed in red, and when she tries to catch her breath she lets out a broken sob instead. "You knew!" she shouts, and even though it's only 7AM all Clarke can smell is whiskey. "You fucking asshole, you _knew_!"

"Knew what?"

"Don't play dumb with me! You knew what she did and you still brought her here!"

"Raven, what are you talking about?"

"I trusted you! I thought- You- She killed my parents."

"I know."

"I _know_ you know! That's the fucking problem! I _trusted_ you, and you brought her here and acted like she'd done _nothing wrong_."

"She _hasn't_."

"Did you not hear me correctly? She killed my parents, Clarke. She brought SHIELD after us and _she killed my parents_."

"It's not her fault. She never had a choice."

"Bullshit. Everyone's got a choice."

She plants her hands on Raven's shoulders, shoves her hard enough to send her stumbling backwards. " _Really_? That's what you think? _She didn't fucking recognize me_. She's been stuffed in a freezer for years, you think that was a choice? You think she chose that arm? You think she had any choice in what she did for HYDRA, any idea about it, except what she was _told_? Tell me, what do you think happened to her when she fought back, when she didn't follow orders?"

"She killed my parents, and God knows how many other people."

"A hell of a lot less than have died by Reyes weapons. A hell of a lot less than died by Ultron."

" _Get out_."

"Reyes, you can't-"

She knows the punch is coming from the first flex of Raven's shoulder, but she holds steady, takes the blow and sucks back the blood when the knuckles split her lip. "I said _get the hell out_."

"She didn't kill them," she says, wiping blood away with her sleeve and then grabbing Raven's wrist when she cocks her fist back to take another swing. "The Winter Soldier might have, sure, there's evidence to support that, but Lexa Callaghan sure as hell didn't. You can't blame the woman for the actions of the weapon."

"Maybe, but the Soldier's all that's _left_ ," Raven hisses, wrenching her arm free of Clarke's hand so she can slap her palm down on the door lock. "You might not think so, but it's the truth. Go on, take her. Find out for yourself. And don't you fucking dare come crying to me when you wake up to find she's cut your throat." She spins on her heel, pulling her phone from her pocket and barking commands into it as she strides off, leaving Clarke staring at the open door.

\--

The blonde- _Clarke_ \- Clarke's back is tense as she leads her out of the sterile lab. She'd tried to put on a smile as she unbuckled her bindings, but the discomfort is still there, in the tightness of her jaw, the set of her shoulders. She heads for the elevator doors down the hall, punches the button, cracks the plastic paneling surrounding it with the force of the contact.

She takes note of the floor numbers when Clarke reaches for the one marked with the star and coloured rings; two through fifty-seven don't seem to be accessible from this car, while the remainder are labelled with a variety of symbols. Some of them connect to files in her head, the hourglass pointing to the Mission Director she'd encountered earlier, _Anya Volkoff, former KGB, target-_

_Reset._

She rubs at her temples with her metal fingers, the feeling of déjà vu making her legs wobble beneath her. She reaches out her other hand and steadies herself against the elevator wall, ignoring the concerned glance sent her way and taking a deep breath to compose herself as Clarke's hand shifts towards the shield strapped to her back. _Mission failure, the targets survived_ -

_Reset._

The mission objective- _Clarke_ \- Clarke- _the mission objective_ \- **_Clarke_ ** exits the elevator and comes to a halt in the middle of a living room, bracketed by a pair of plush leather couches, the window behind her looking out over the city, _Chrysler Building, New York_. A quick scan of the room gives away the locations of weaponry; the bulge of a set of knives buried beneath one of the couch cushions, the print hanging a degree or so off-level in a frame thick enough to conceal a firearm. But the most dangerous weapon in the room hides in plain sight, the blonde in front of her in the ragged sweatpants and the long-sleeved shirt that matches her shield. With every move she makes, Clarke edges closer to grabbing the weapon from her back.

She drifts into parade rest as Clarke fiddles with her harness, and then snaps to attention when she looks up. "I'll grab you some clean clothes if you want to wash-

_-up." She strips her jacket off, peeling it free where the Mission Objective's blood has gummed it up against her arm. Undershirt. Combat pants. The soldier opens up the valve for the hose, sets the spray on her as the projector splays flashing images across the wall in front of her. The pressure of the water strips away the layers of blood and dirt and leave raw pink skin behind, but the pain is negligible, normal. She doesn't huddle from the torrent, instead stands tall, at ease, feet planted and eyes on the wall._

_"The world is diseased." A burning city. "But HYDRA is immortal." The rising sun. "Standing above the spoil and the rot." Bloated American corpses on the battlefield. "Cut off a limb, and two more will take its place." The skull-and-tentacle flag, flying-_

_One of the techs passes between her and the projector, and she hooks her foot around his ankle, tugging and dropping him into the path of the hose. His screams echo through the room when he gets the spray full-force in the face, and she takes full advantage of the momentary distraction, diving towards the woman with the hose and pulling knives from sheaths at her hips. The first goes into the throat of the soldier at the door, reaching to pull the alarm. The second-_

\--

There's a knife embedded to the hilt in the wall, and Lexa stands with her back to the window, another blade in her grasp and eyes darting back and forth. Clarke drops her shield and approaches with her hands raised, empty palms facing forward. "Lexa, put the knife down."

"Lexa is dead," she hisses, fingers tightening around the hilt, and her face is all Asset, mouth a thin slash and eyes narrowed. "Get that through your thick skull."

"Lex," she tries again, "put the knife down. Please."

"You are not the Mission Director-"

"No, I'm your _friend_." Clarke takes a step forward, her hands shaking slightly as she reaches for the weapon. "And you're safe here. You don't need that. You're safe. You're _safe_." She tugs the knife from Lexa's clenched fist, and the plates of her metal arm shift and pack down, but she doesn't move to stop her. She bends to place it on the floor and kicks it away with her heel. "You don't have to change; you don't have to do anything you don't want to do. Okay?"

Lexa's eyes soften but her fists stay clenched at her sides. "Confirm."

Clarke pulls her gaze to the ceiling and swallows thickly as she blinks back tears. "What _do_ you want to do?" she asks finally, her voice wavering as she looks anywhere but at Lexa. Out of the corner of her eye, Clarke only just catches the shrug she gives in reply.

"Follow the active mission imperative."

Her heart leaps into her throat, and she takes a step forward, hand reaching for Lexa's jumpsuit but falling short. "What- what's the mission imperative, Lex?"

"You are not the Mission Director. You do not have clearance."

"Who _is_ the director?" And there's a sinking feeling in her gut when Lexa opens her mouth again.

"Anya Volkoff."


	14. Chapter 14

**September 11, 2014**

\--

Anya's sprawled across the couch in Raven's living room when she sweeps back onto her floor with rage still pumping through her veins. The spy's feet are kicked up on the coffee table as she thumbs through a copy of Popular Science that features a photo of the Hulkbuster on the cover.

"You're looking radiant as ever."

"Save it," she growls, taking a seat at the other end of the couch and loosening the straps of her brace. A sigh leaks from her mouth unbidden and she bites her lip to hold it back.

"The Cradle could fix that," Anya says without looking up from the article. "Twenty minutes and you'd be good as new."

She stiffens and her hand clenches around the padded metal. It's not the first time it's been suggested; Jaha had been all over her about it from the moment the new technology had been introduced to SHIELD. But it's the first time an Avenger has brought it up, and her breath sticks in her throat. "It's a good reminder," she says after a moment, her voice stiff.

"That you're fallible?"

She forces herself to release the brace, but her hand drifts to her chest, circles the gaping hole left by the removal of her reactor. "That trust can be fleeting."

Anya exhales slowly, takes her time closing the magazine and reaching out to place it on the coffee table. She drops her feet to the floor then seems to change her mind, folding one leg up beneath her and glancing at Raven with an arched eyebrow. "I'm not Nygel, Reyes," she sighs as she runs her hand through her hair, pulling it back from her face. "I wasn't trying to betray you. I was trying to protect you."

"I don't need you protecting my feelings. Not now, not about this." She leans forward, propping her elbows on her knees and dropping her head into her hands. "How long have you known?" She doesn't mean for it to sound so broken, but the words come stuttering from her lips, clipped and aching.

"It was a KGB hit. I've known that since it was put out, but I wasn't sure that it was hers, that it was _HYDRA's_ , until a few days ago."

"When Jaha gave up her file?"

Anya shrugs noncommittally and picks at a thread hanging loose from her shirt. She glances over and scans her face, must see _something_ there, because the next thing out of her mouth is-

"Raven, what did you do?"

"What do you mean?"

"Don't play dumb with me, I know you a hell of a lot better than that. What did you do?"

"Nothing yet," she grits out, clenching her fist around the strip of metal shoved deep in her pocket.  She withdraws it slowly and places it on the couch between them. "I'm about to, though."

Anya picks it up and turns it over in her hands, slides her fingers along the length of the plating before looking back at Raven. "The Soldier..."

"It's how I found them. It's how SHIELD found them." She reaches across and taps the transmitter. "It's still operational."

"What are you saying, Reyes?"

"How do you feel about sending Jaha on a wild goose chase?"

Anya shakes her head and tightens her grip on the metal, and Raven can't help but flinch as she crushes the transmitter in her fist. "It wouldn't have done any good," she replies to the unspoken question. "He already knows she's here."

"Then we give her up."

"And what good would _that_ do us?"

"She'll get what she deserves."

"She doesn't deserve that. She's been brainwashed, Reyes, it was never her call to make those hits. Did you blame Jasper for the bodies he left behind him?"

"It's not the same-"

"It's _exactly_ the same. Trust me, if she'd been aware of what she was doing, things would have gone much differently."

"But they didn't," and her cheeks are wet with tears though she doesn't remember starting to cry. She grabs Anya by the front of her shirt and tugs her closer. "She _killed_ them. She killed my parents."

Anya loops an arm around her, tugs her tight to her chest. "I know," she murmurs, Raven's tears hot on her chin even as lips find her throat. "I know," and her breath hitches, "but this isn't how you should be dealing with it."

Raven clamps her hand over the Russian's mouth and sinks her teeth into her pulse point. "Don't you fucking dare tell me what to do. Not after you kept it from me."

"Raven-"

"Shut _up_."

\--

Clarke paces back and forth in the elevator, and then strides out into the war room the moment the doors begin to open. "You had better tell me what the _hell_ is going on. I've got Lexa back there telling me Anya's given her some sort of mission imperative, and if _that's_ true, it'd mean Anya just lied to my face about whether she had Lexa activated. If that's not enough, you're acting pretty goddamn suspicious yourself. I want answers, and I want them _now_."

Raven startles, then glances towards her and swallows hard. She turns back towards the window, her hands clasped behind her as she looks out over the city. "I don't know what Volkoff's aim is, but I've got more faith in her methods than I have in whatever Callaghan might come up with on her own."

"So you're okay with her using her for whatever she's up to?"

Raven spins on her heel and raises an eyebrow. "You didn't seem to have many problems with it a couple days ago."

"I had no choice! It was use her or leave someone behind!"

"You could have left her and saved us all this trouble. It's the least she'd deserve."

"You know I'm never going to do that, Reyes."

Raven grimaces and nods sharply. "I'd figured that out, yeah." She slips into one of the chairs and bows her head towards the table, her fingertips tracing absently across her lips. "She's gone, by the way. Anya."

"Where?"

She spins a sheet of paper on the desk so it faces Clarke, but doesn't wait for her to read it before replying.

"Back to SHIELD, I presume."

Her voice breaks, and Clarke's heart plummets as she traces over the hurried scrawl.

_I see the picture more clearly now._

_Don't try to follow me._

_Stay safe._

_A_

"I thought maybe there was something she hadn't told me, something she didn't _need_ to tell me, but I didn't expect this."

Raven's hand drifts towards the discoloured skin at her throat, and then she nods sullenly. "You can say that again."

\--

**September 7, 2014**

\--

_"Guys, we may have a situation."_

_"Ditto!" Bellamy shouts, putting himself between the SHIELD agents and his sister's body. He catches the edge of a surgical tray with his hip in his haste, sending the tools crashing to the floor._

_Anya stays back of him as the flames lick over his skin, watches in slight amusement as he waves his hand towards the agent on his left only for the magic to be rebuffed by the metal-skinned man. She busies herself removing the IV lines from Octavia's arms and looks up again to find two agents crumpled against the wall and Bellamy floating a few inches above the ground, red fire balled above his palms, ready to be thrown._

_"Let's go, Blake!" she shouts, loud enough that he turns his head towards her briefly, eyes widening in shock. The second of distraction is all the closest agent needs to catch him in the back of his head with the butt of her gun.  He hits the ground heavily, his head thudding down against tiles, and Anya doesn't spare him a glance as she turns to the closest agent._

_"Break my arm," she hisses, holding it out towards him._

_"Ma'am?"_

_"That's an order." He grasps her wrist and elbow in steel hands and brings his knee up hard. The bone splinters, and for a moment she watches in detached wonder as the white shard pierces her skin. Then the pain ricochets through her body. "Fuck!" She cradles her injured arm to her chest and frees her gun from its holster with her other hand, leveling it at his chest. "Sorry, boys."_

_They just watch her with resignation as she hits their vests dead-on and sends them sprawling, one-two-three._


	15. Chapter 15

**September 11, 2014**

\--

The elevator doors open to the shared floor and Clarke finds herself face to face with Bellamy. He gives her a once-over, his eyes flashing with disdain, before stepping inside the car and tapping the button for the hospital wing.

"I'm sorry, I-" she tries, and he crosses his arms and shakes his head.

"Don't even try that with me. You almost killed her."

"I didn't _mean_ to," she replies, and she almost laughs at how weak the excuse sounds when she voices it.

"The matter of intent doesn't change the fact that she is lying in another hospital bed because of you."

She reaches out and slams her palm down on the emergency stop, then spins to face him. "If I'd done nothing then she wouldn't be in the hospital. She'd be lying in a morgue," she replies, fists clenched at her sides. "Madrox would have replicated inside her."

"And if you'd just followed your own plan she would have been back in the Tower instead of out in the wilderness."

"No battle plan ever survives first contact with the enemy, Blake. You can't blame me for what came to pass on the battlefield, at the house or in the woods. I was reacting to the situation, and Octavia was the unfortunate casualty." Clarke threads her hand through her hair and sighs. "Not even that! She's alive! We all are. We're all here, we're all alive, and that's good enough!"

"If not for us, it could have gone much differently. You keep putting her at risk, Captain, and I'm not going to stand back and let you do that again."

"Watch yourself, Blake."

He lets flames flick up one arm and down the other. "She's the only family I have left. I'm not going to lose her just because you've lost your head over a shell of a memory."

"Lexa is the only family _I_ have left. She's _all_ I have left. I've not 'lost my head' over anything. She's in there, and I'm going to get her out."

"Then you understand where I'm coming from." He reaches out and taps the emergency stop, and the elevator whirs back into action. "I trust we won't have to discuss this again?"

\--

Clarke's head is still spinning when she makes her way back to her floor. It doesn't help her at all when she steps off the elevator to find Lexa and Monty sitting cross-legged in the middle of the living room, the coffee table shoved out of the way to give them space. She rubs at her eyes with the heels of her palms and takes a second look, but the same scene still welcomes her.

"Uhm, hey…?"

Monty scrambles up and scratches at the back of his neck as he shifts his weight from foot to foot. "I was just up in the kitchen when FRIDAY told me she was experiencing some distress." He glances over his shoulder and shrugs. "She's, I don't know, we didn't really talk, I just got her to calm down a bit."

"Hey, breathe, flyboy. It's alright, really. Thank you." She reaches over and ruffles his hair, chuckling when his cheeks stain bright red. "You're a gem. You know that, right?"

"Mighta heard it once or twice," he laughs before shoving her hand away. "Go easy on her, yeah? This has gotta be hard, it's gonna take her a while to get through it." He swallows hard, kicks his toes against the floor. "If she ever will. Just, give her a while. Hold off on the questions. I know you probably didn't get to ask her much when you were on the run, but overwhelming her isn't going to do either of you any good."

"I'll try," she mumbles, then loops her hand around his wrist when he turns towards the elevator. "Wait, you believe me? That there was something there, when we were out in the field?"

He tilts his head to the side, purses his lips as he looks over her shoulder at Lexa. "You haven't given me any reason to not trust you before, Cap. Don't see why I should stop now."

"She _did_ try to kill you," Clarke offers, forcing a laugh.

"A lot of people have. But, me and you, we're soldiers, right? We know better than anyone that the person pulling the trigger isn't always the one calling the shots. No matter what side they're acting for." He tucks his hands in his pockets and shrugs. "So I'm gonna give her the benefit of the doubt on that one. It's about time someone besides you did."

She ducks her head, but it's not enough to hide her smile from him. "Thanks, Monty."

"I mean, if she boots me off a roof again then all bets are off, but barring that I've got your backs." He pauses between the open elevator doors. "Keep me updated, Griffin. Don't make me have to get FRIDAY to do it for me."

"You got it," she replies absently as she turns her attention back to Lexa. The soldier's still sitting in the same spot, but her eyes track Clarke's movement as she crosses the room and settles down in front of her.

\--

The blonde - _Clarke -_  settles down on her heels in front of her, her shoulders tense and eyes flickering around the room. "Hey," she says finally. "I've just- I need to clarify something. Uhm. When we were on the run, you made me buy what we needed to fight the Madri... a couple hours before they attacked us. How'd you know we'd need that gear? That they'd be the ones coming after us?"

She closes her eyes, the name bringing up vague memories but nothing concrete, nothing that can ground her in a time, a location, a _mission_. "Unknown," she grits out, and Clarke's eyes narrow.

"You didn't call them down on us?"

She is an Asset, not a Mission Director, doesn't she know that's not _protocol_? "Negative."

Clarke worries her lip between her teeth, and she has to lean forward to catch her words. "In Washington. Your mission was to kill me." She nods slowly _._

_"You're my mission."_

_Reset._

She presses down on her knees when the blonde flinches. "But you pulled me out of the water instead." And her eyes flash blue and _cold_ and-

_Reset-_

She's falling, plunging from the deck, dead weight, and there's a tug at her chest as she watches her, sky and cold and white, blinding white, and-

_Rese-_

She dives out into the air-

_Res-_

The feeling of déjà vu swells in her throat-

_Re-_

She blacks out for a moment when she hits the water, gasps for breath, forgets why she's there as the weight of her arm drags her head beneath the surface-

_R-_

Pain, frozen, hands on her-

_-_

But

There's sunshine hair

There's sky blue eyes

How could she _forget_

The Summer Soldier sinks beneath her

Leave her

Abort mission.

_Save her._

Target survives.

"I did," she admits softly, tracing circles on her kneecap with the tip of her finger, the other hand pressed flat to the floor.

"Why?"

"I don't know."

"You don't remember, or you can't say?"

"I don't _know_." She curls her metal fingers, carving ruts in the hardwood flooring, then swallows thickly around the lump in her throat. "The mission imperative changed and I don't know _why_."

"Is there anything you _do_ know?" Clarke snaps, then her hands shoot to her mouth and her eyes widen. "Sorry, sorry, that was uncalled for," she stutters, taking an unconscious step back under the ferocity of her stare, "it's just, I'm trying to understand, to put the pieces together, because something feels _off_. Something's not right, Lex."

"Starting with that," she breathes, bending one knee and pulling it up into her chest so she can rest her chin on her kneecap. Clarke's eyebrows shoot high. "I- That's- That's not my name. I'm not that girl."

"You are, you're Lexa-"

The plates in her arm shift and pack as her hand curls tight into a fist. "I'm not," she growls. "I think... I _know_? I know I'm not. I went to the Smithsonian. I saw the exhibit. I might have her face, but I'm not that girl."

"But... You remembered Poland..."

"I- I remember so much, but I can't tell whether it's fact or fiction."

"Poland was real, Lex."

"No, no. I wasn't there. I was, but not with you. I wasn't, I was, I-" she brings her other knee up in front of her, a brick wall, a barricade between them, threads her fingers through her hair. Sighs. "I parachuted down into knee-deep snow in the middle of the night-" the memory is there, just out of reach, flickering shadows against a grainy background, if only she can just _grab_ it, "I had to- I think- They made me pull the heat sink out of my arm because my fingers and toes were turning blue and I couldn't finish the mission if I froze to death. The metal burned against my palm. I was so cold- Wait, no, that was _Austria_ , and- One bullet to the chest, one to the head-"

"Hey. Hey. Look at me." Clarke sinks to a knee in front of Lexa.

"I shot him, once in the chest, once in the head. Because, because- Why?" She slaps her palm against her temple, her eyes narrowing. "He was a- He didn't- He-" Tears well up in the corners of her eyes, and she wipes them away with her forearm and sniffs sharply. "He was a traitor. His death was necessary." But the words feel wrong on her tongue and she fists her hands in her hair and tucks her chin to her chest. Her breath burns acid in her lungs. "It was necessary," she whispers, mostly to herself, but she doesn't quite believe it, even with the repetition. "It was- It-"

"Lex," Clarke breathes.

"That's not my _name_ ," she sobs into the space between her knees, and her chest is heaving, constricting, "even if that's who I was before, that's not me anymore. I've got- my head, it's full of these- these bits, these shreds, and none of it feels... real. Everything's jammed up in there and it's like- I feel like- my head's about to _burst_ , but there's still nothing genuine packed in there. Nothing real, nothing I can trust."

"You can trust _me_." Blonde-target-ally-friend-mission objective-Summer Soldier- _Clarke_ rests a hand on her shoulder, voice pleading. She shrinks away from the contact, heat searing through her bones at the touch. "I know how difficult that's got to be, but I promise, you can trust me."

_"Trust me, Soldier. It's for your own good."_

She tugs at the collar of the borrowed henley, popping the buttons open and freeing her throat. "I can't even trust myself," she mutters, taking a deep breath as she tries to loosen the shirt even further. The fabric tears under her metal fingers. "I can't- Just- _Fuck!_ " Clarke reaches out, but she throws herself backwards, out of range, pops up to her feet. Her socks skid across the floor, send her off balance, and she hits the ground again with an echoing thud.

Clarke's face swims through her vision. "Are… are you okay?"

She climbs to her feet, resolutely ignoring Clarke's outstretched hand and giving only a growled "Don't touch me" in response as her throat seems to swell shut around the words. "Just… just _don't_." She can feel Clarke's eyes on her, and she shoulders past her and heads for the hallway.

It takes an hour in the dark, her back pressed hard against the door and fingers digging bruises into her thighs, before she can breathe again.


	16. Chapter 16

**September 11, 2014**

\--

She resents Raven for presuming that, if she built her a floor in the tower, she would come and stay there. She does _not_ resent her for equipping one of the rooms with a fully-stocked wet bar. Well, at least not once she finds the bottles of Asgardian liquor tucked to the back of the shelf. Otherwise it would've felt like a slap in the face, considering her tolerance is too high for her to get drunk off of regular alcohol.

Thank God for the gods.

She pours herself out a shot, toasts Lincoln, and throws it back. Another quickly follows, and after that she just gives up on the glass, taking a swig directly from the bottle before tucking it under her arm and wandering across to the bookshelves lining the opposite wall.

Raven's outdone herself in pulling the miniature library together. At first glance it's a mixture of books from before and after her fall, some she'd read by candlelight and others Monty had listed in her notebook for her to take a look at. And knowing Reyes, they're probably all first editions. It's a heart-warming gesture, just like the rest of the floor she's had so little time to go through. Though it was probably more her money and her CEO's work than any significant effort on the engineer's part, she muses, pressing the mouth of the bottle to her lips.

She pauses mid-swig and almost does a spit-take across the spines of the collection. Nestled in amongst the pristine classics is a novel with pages warped from the damp, the tattered spine only barely legible. She reaches out a tentative hand and tugs it free from its neighbours, and the spidery cursive in the top right hand corner of the first page confirms her initial suspicions.

Lexa had pressed the book into her hands on her birthday one year, wrapped up tight in newsprint. She'd bounced nervously from foot to foot as Clarke had unwrapped it, and then her face had broken into a wide grin, a perfect match of the one Clarke had been sporting. Her copy of _The Hobbit_ had been much less ragged back then, though countless nights spent curled up on couch cushions on Lexa's floor, bent over the pages with their heads knocking together, had served to wear the binding out fairly quickly.

She's half a chapter in, the words swimming across the page thanks to a combination of the alcohol and the tears she refuses to acknowledge are welling up, when someone speaks up from behind her.

"She spent a year tracking that down, and then didn't stop hassling the man who had it in his private collection until he coughed it up to her."

Clarke chokes on the mouthful she'd just slugged back, and her face burns as she coughs into her elbow and tries to catch her breath. She takes another moment to compose herself before turning to face Harper McIntyre, though that's never been enough. There's too much of Niylah in the curve of her jaw, in the bow of her lips, for Clarke to be able to meet her eyes and not feel gutted. She's sure the Reyes Industries CEO knows it, too, and she's grateful the woman is far too polite to confront Clarke about how hard she works to avoid her gaze.

"She recovered some of your sketchbooks, as well." Clarke spins on her heel and scans the shelves, teetering off balance for just a moment before Harper steps forward and steadies her elbow. "You had Sergeant Callaghan listed as your next of kin, so your possessions fell into a sort of government purgatory when you went into the ice, and then ended up being auctioned off." She bends down and gently removes a stack of books from the drawer beneath the bookcase. "Despicable, really, and Raven thought the same, so she hunted down as many buyers as she could and convinced them that it would be in their best interest to return your belongings to you."

Harper hands her the sketchbooks and relieves her of the bottle of liquor in the same motion, smoothly enough that Clarke doesn't realize she's taken it until she's setting it back behind the bar and filling two glasses of water from the tap. "I wasn't done with that," she complains weakly, crossing the room and taking a seat on one of the bar stools. She spreads the sketchbooks out in front of her before Harper slides one of the glasses over towards her, and lets out a shuddering sigh as she trails her fingertips across the wrinkled cover of the most recent book.

Harper arches a brow but doesn't dignify her with a response, instead turning her attention to her phone in a rather transparent attempt to afford Clarke some privacy as she flips the book open.

The first few pages are stuffed with pencil sketches of shoulders and hips, the small of a back, fingers clenched around the grip of a rifle.

She bites down on her knuckle after she turns to the last full page, holding back a sob. She'd picked up the book once in the weeks between losing Lexa and crashing her plane into the ocean, and the open pages are warped where her tears had fallen on the paper. She can still remember how heavy the pencil had felt between her fingers, how difficult it had been to put lead to paper.

Her fingers drift across the sketch of the sniper, lying long in the grass with her rifle barrel out over the edge of the hide. She's glancing back over her shoulder mid-laugh, her face smudged with camouflage paint, her eyes shining. She'd always looked right at home with a gun in her hands and a target spotted through her scope.

Clarke thinks maybe that was never a good sign.

She rubs away her tears with the hem of her sleeve and hiccups into the crook of her elbow before looking up slowly. Her head is spinning when she meets Harper's eyes, and she sits there with her mouth gaping open for a moment or two before she's able to find any words.

"I'm drunk," she says finally, a bit lamely, as if it'll cancel out her moment of weakness.

"You don't say," Harper deadpans, the corner of her mouth twitching up before she retains her composure.

"I am," she reaffirms, in between hiccups. "It helps. Didn't help back then, but that might've been because I couldn't get drunk. I think if I'd been able to I never would've put the bottle down."

"Oh, Clarke..."

"I _miss_ her." She taps her pointer finger emphatically on the open page in front of her. "Even if she's down the hall. Which she is. But she _isn't_."

Harper tucks her phone back in the pocket of her slacks and rounds the bar, perches on the edge of the farthest stool from her.

"After Raven was captured," she begins, and despite the haze Clarke can tell she's weighing her words carefully, "long enough afterwards that we'd thought it was clear the chances of us getting her back were slim to none, my memories of her started to change. We grew up in the same circles, I don't know whether she's told you that, and she was difficult back then." Clarke snorts. "Yeah, I know, not that she's much better now. But when I thought I wasn't getting her back, I started to forget about that. I started seeing her through rose-tinted glasses, because one shouldn't think ill of the dead, right?

"Then she was back, and it took me a while to realign the two, the golden girl I'd made her out to be in my head and the fractured woman we got back from that desert. It took me a long while to accept that she'd been changed by what she'd gone through, and that she wasn't ever going to be the girl she'd been before." Harper spins her empty glass on its edge and then settles it down and motions towards the sketchbooks. "I know it's not the same, how you feel about Sergeant Callaghan, what they did to her. But if you try to make the person she is now fit your ideas of who she used to be, all you're going to do is make it hell on both of you."

Clarke slumps forward and sighs heavily when her forehead meets the bar. "It's just so hard to separate them," she mumbles, turning her head to press her cheek against the cool surface. "Lexa and Sergeant Callaghan and the Soldier."

"I know, Clarke, but you have to try." Harper reaches over and pats her shoulder soothingly. "We're here, though. You don't have to do it alone."

"Tell that to Raven."

"She'll come to her senses. It's all just a bit too raw for her right now, to be able to separate fact and emotion."

"She's always been shit at that," Clarke agrees with a wet laugh, scrubbing at her face with her shirt sleeve. She fiddles absently with the binding of one of her sketchbooks. "But she _will,_ right? She'll forgive her?"

Harper purses her lips. "Honestly?"

"Honesty'd be preferable, yeah."

"It's going to take time. A lot of time."

"We don't have that luxury."

"I don't know what you want me to say. It's _Raven_. She holds grudges like it's her job."

"You need to make her see. She listens to you, she trusts you. You tell her to do something, and she does it."

"I don't know where you've been, Cap, but the girl that listened to me is long gone."

"I thought you-"

"We're not. Not anymore."

"And you're-"

"Fine with it."

Clarke tries and fails to pass of a snort as a cough. "Right. And pigs can fly."

"Fuck off, Captain." Harper reaches over and punches her lightly in the shoulder, before recoiling and rubbing at her knuckles. "Jeez, are you made of steel?"

"Adamantium, actually," she retorts with a grin. "And don't think you're getting off that easily. When'd you-" A shout echoes down the hall. "Well."

Harper arches her eyebrow and shrugs a shoulder. "Guess we'll have to continue that conversation never." Her words are punctuated by another, louder yell, and Clarke jumps to her feet, herding Harper down behind the protection of the bar.

"Oh, we'll get to it," she promises, then sprints down the hall.

She skids to a stop into front of Lexa's- in front of the room in which the soldier had locked herself away, and when a third shout comes she doesn't even take a moment to think, just throws her shoulder into the door and knocks it wide open, hard enough it slams into the wall.

The soldier shoots out of bed and pins Clarke in an instant, knees bracketing her hips as she gets something wrapped tight around her throat, biting into her skin, cutting off her air.

The edges of her vision are going black as Clarke gets her hands hooked behind the soldier's head, pulling her down against her as Clarke levers herself up just enough to smash her forehead into the soldier's nose. The cartilage crackles at the contact, and the soldier's grip loosens enough that Clarke can get a shuddering breath. The air burns down her throat as she torques her hips, bucks the soldier off her and sends her sprawling.

Even in the darkness she can tell the moment when the soldier's eyes clear, and then she shakes her head and trips backwards, leaving a trail of blood in her wake. "I-"

"It's not your fault." Clarke's voice is raspy, her throat straining to get the words out as she tugs the makeshift garrotte away from her neck. She runs her thumb over the braided fishing line and then pushes herself up off her back and climbs shakily to her feet. "It's not your fault."

Harper and Monty are in the doorway, the former with skin charred red, the latter with Glock in hand. She waves them back, but Monty draws closer, presses his palm to the small of Clarke's back and bends his head to her ear. "You good?"

She nods distractedly, eyes still locked with the soldier's. He repeats the question and she pushes him gently backwards before taking a wary step towards the bed.

"I'm okay, Monty, I promise."

He lingers at the threshold, questions poised on his lips, but Harper shakes her head, tugs him away from the door. Clarke spares them one last glance before she approaches the soldier, slow and careful.

"Hey," she says softly, crouching by the soldier's ankle where she's bundled herself into the corner, arms wrapped around her head. "Sorry about your nose."

"It will heal," the stiff reply comes.

"My neck will, too. It's not your fault, I shouldn't have barged in-"

"When was I transported to New York?"

"What?"

"The skyline, I recognize it. We are in New York. When was I transported here?"

"We've been here a couple of days, ever since we left Iowa. You remember Iowa?"

"I think so. I think- Madrox, Quint. The Multiple Man. SHIELD asset. I was subdued."

"That's right."

The soldier raises her head slowly, her eyes narrowing as she looks up at Clarke. "Captain America is a SHIELD asset. I could understand if it were HYDRA, but SHIELD agents at each other's throats? Curious."

“Circumstances have changed. Allegiances have changed.” The soldier purses her lips, and then shrugs in acceptance. “You remember that fight now, though?”

“Bits and pieces,” she mutters, cupping the back of her neck with her hand. “Prior to being subdued.” Her fingers flex, dig harder into her skin. “I utilized flashbangs in their incapacitation.”

Clarke settles back on her heels with a grin. “And it was genius.”

The soldier shakes her head, the dark purple of fresh bruises arcing out around her fingertips. "It is protocol when engaging in combat with the Madri."

Her stomach drops, and she presses the heels of her palms against her eyelids. "You knew," she whispers, her voice catching in her throat. "You knew the Madri would come after us, you asked me for the supplies you'd need to fight them."

"It was a possibility accounted for by the mission directive."

She lifts the garrotte, still held tight in her clenched fist. "And this, was this a possibility accounted for by your mission directive?"

"That was not meant for you. I- It was not meant for you."

"For whom, then?"

"You do not have clearance."

Clarke stands and weaves her fingers through her hair, sighing as she stares up at the ceiling and blinks back tears. "You can tell me! There isn't a mission anymore. You're safe, you're _free_."

"I am to follow the active mission imperative."

"Volkoff is _gone_ ," and the soldier's head snaps up at the harsh tone, "she's gone and the mission is over. Whatever orders you've got, you don't need to follow them. I _promise_."

The soldier surges up, pressing forward and looming over her. "I am to follow the active mission imperative in the Mission Director's absence," she growls.

"You're not the Asset anymore." Clarke raises her hand, holding herself back just shy of the soldier's skin. The soldier doesn't move away and so Clarke lets her palm find the curve of the soldier's jaw, her fingertips brushing across the plane of her cheek. "They don't own you."

The soldier flinches.

Clarke jerks away, her hand shooting back to her hip as she pulls back from the soldier. "They don't own you," she repeats carefully, "you know that, right? You're not theirs, you can walk away from this."

"I killed children. I slaughtered families in their sleep. I- I liked it. The warmth of their blood on my skin, the terror in their eyes as their lives left their bodies. I _enjoyed_ it."

"What you did wasn't you. That was the Soldier. You're not-"

"I am still the one who made those choices."

"But when you came back to yourself, you did the right thing. You turned yourself in."

"I am not sure that I am the one who made that choice."

Clarke takes a step back, her hand going to her mouth.

"I am to follow the active mission imperative."


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all, my apologies for however long it's been (and however many accounts). The whole story has undergone some restructuring and reworking, and this chapter ending in particular has been significantly altered.

**September 12, 2014**

\--

Lincoln is anything but subtle. What with the way her world's been torn apart anew in the past week, Clarke's glad that that, at least, remains a constant.

Thanks to the thunder crashing through the eerily clear sky, she knows he's on his way minutes before he arrives, and so she's stepping foot on the roof just as he lands heavily on the helipad.

"I wasn't sure you'd come." She's standing with her back to him when she says it, reaching out to slide open the door back into the tower.  

He closes the distance between them in a moment, clamps his hand down over hers on the handle. "Nor was I," he admits after a moment's hesitation. "Not with Asgard on the brink of war. But your lives hang in the balance as well, and I can spare that time to aid friends."

"Considering her a friend is a good a place as any to start; there aren't many here who do."

"I make my own judgments, Captain. I would have thought you understood that by now." She gives him a small smile and he pats her shoulder. "I will do my best with her, though I can offer no promises of healing."

"I didn't expect anything more."

Monty pokes his head out of the kitchen as they pass by. "Hey, Linc, didn't expect you until tomorrow."

"Montgomery, it is good to see you again, though the circumstances do leave something to be desired."

"That's usually how it works," he laughs, falling in beside them and exchanging a fist bump with Lincoln. "You have any plans on how you're going to try and get the truth out of Callaghan?"

"I will not until she is in front of me," he replies with a sigh, reaching out to tap the elevator button. "It is a very imprecise thing, magic." Clarke moves to follow him into the elevator car when the doors slide open, but he bars her way with his arm. "I think it would be better if you were not present for this, Captain."

"Lincoln-"

"I will be safe with her, Clarke. We are just going to talk. We will be okay."

She presses against his arm for a moment longer, then her shoulders fall and she nods, moving back and allowing the doors to slide closed between them.

\--

They enter the living room to find Raven perched on the edge of the couch, fiddling absently with her brace as she stares intently at the TV screen. When Clarke moves to catch a glimpse of the content, anger billows up toxic in her gut and she has to fight hard to swallow it back down.  

"I didn't know you had security cameras on my floor," she comments, still inwardly seething when she flops down on the other end of the couch and has to shift slightly to get the cushion to sit right beneath her. Monty eyes them nervously before snagging the seat in between them, like his presence would stop Clarke grabbing the engineer by her collar and shaking some sense into her.

On second thought, it probably would.

"I don't use them," she replies, though the evidence to the contrary is displayed in high definition in front of them. "This is the first time."

"Because that makes me feel any better about it."

"Sorry if I'm not here to make you _comfortable_ , Griffin," she spits, grabbing the remote from the coffee table and flicking to another camera angle as Lincoln comes to stand in front of Callaghan. "She admitted that she's here under someone's orders, and until I know whose and what goal they're oriented towards I'm not about to leave her unmonitored."

"Isn't Lincoln enough?"

"A thousand of him wouldn't be."

"She's not a danger to us, Raven."

"Tell that to Blake."

"She had nothing to do with what happened to Octavia."

Raven snorted and turned her attention back to the screen. "Yeah, okay, Captain. So you're telling me I _didn't_ find a transmitter in that arm?"

"You found a transmitter?"

"Found it, tore it out. You're welcome."

Clarke shakes her head. "She can't- There's got to be more to this than we know. We've got to give her the benefit of the doubt."

"Oh, there's a _great_ suggestion, give the morally-unsound mass murderer the 'benefit of the doubt'."

"This isn't about morals anymore, Reyes. Morality is grey in this game. It's a thing I've learned to live with," and Monty is nodding, backing her up. "It's what you have to do when you're a professional killer. It's the only way you ever get to be a professional survivor."

"You don't have to tell me that, I know it full well. But what do you want? For me to look the other way on this? You want me to forget that we've got a loaded gun downstairs just waiting for its trigger to be pulled?"

"She has a _name_."

" _It_ is a _weapon_." Raven pokes Clarke hard in the chest, sending her stumbling back a step. " _It_ is going to get us all killed, and that blood's going to be on _your_ hands, Captain. I want it dead, or I want it gone."

"She's a _person_ , she has a _name_ ," she shouts. Monty scrambles to get between them as she looms over Raven, and he spreads his arms wide to keep them apart.

"Guys, I don't think this is how we should have this discussion-"

"Oh, and how do you suggest we have it, Birdboy, over your _corpse_?"

" _Reyes!_ "

"You know I'm right! It's going to bring _someone_ down on our heads, SHIELD or HYDRA or some other shadowy conspiracy-"

"We don't know that!"

"Tell me, Clarke. When it had it's hands around your neck, did you see someone you loved or did you see your death? Because all I've seen in that- that _thing_ \- is a threat."

"I look at her and I see my friend. Raven, she's my _friend_."

"So was I."

Clarke swallows hard. " _Rae-_ "

"No. You've made it clear where your loyalties lie, and it's sure as hell not with this team."

"Reyes, hold up." Monty reaches out to rest a hand on her forearm. "Let's not make a rash decision here-"

"This isn't some split second decision," she spits, tipping her chin up, "this is the sum of everything I've watched the good captain here do over the past few days. The only interests she has in mind are her own, and her weapon's. Not yours, not mine, and sure as hell not the civilians I've got working here."

"You're the one who brought us here." Clarke paces across the room, her fingers threaded through her hair. "You're the one who built me a floor, you're the one who invited me to stay."

"You're the one who brought a homicidal maniac into my home."

"She is not her past! I thought you of all people would understand that."

"I moved on, I made a change. That weapon is still primed to go off."

"She's _trying_. It's going to take longer; you were taken to make a weapon, Raven, and she was taken to _be_ one."

"That thing downstairs can't _try_ to do anything. All it knows is war. It's a monster, Griffin, and so are you."

Clarke stops in her tracks by the end of the couch. "Care to repeat that, Reyes?" she says, an edge to her voice that betrays her calm facade.

"I said, if you side with it, then you're just the same monster you're claiming it's not."

Clarke moves swiftly, dragging Monty out from between them and retrieving a handgun from beneath the couch cushion. She levels it at Raven, but the engineer doesn't even blink.

"There you go, Captain, proving me right."

"She is _not_ a monster. She is a person, she is a human, she is _enough_."

"That _thing_ is never going to be enough for anyone, even a monster like you."

"Guys-"

"Monty, go."

"I'm not going to let you-"

"I don't want to have to hurt you too. Just go." He glances helplessly from Clarke to Raven and back again, then spins on his heel, and Clarke returns her stony gaze to Raven. "If I'm a monster, what does that make the man who made me?"

Raven's face goes stormy. "FRIDAY, get me Mark XLIX, please."

"Master Reyes, I don't recommend this course-"

"FRIDAY, my _suit_ ," she spits.

"Certainly, Master."

Clarke takes another step forward as pieces of armour shoot past her and find their place on Raven's frame. " _Tell me_ , Reyes. If I'm a monster, what does that make your father? What does that make _you_?"

"People who let their monsters get out of hand. And when I did that, I took the appropriate action. _I put her down_."

"You can't seriously be comparing us to Ultron."

Raven levels her repulsor at Clarke, sparks flickering across the metal covering her palm. "You leave a trail of destruction in your wake wherever you go-"

"And you're any different? Reyes Industries was a _munitions_ manufacturer-"

"Key word being 'was'. I've changed my tune, but from what I've seen, the two of you are far from that."

"She's less than six months free of HYDRA brainwashing! What do you want, a miracle?"

"I want to know what excuse you're going to give me for almost murdering your own teammate."

She takes a shuddering breath. "I missed."

"What?"

"I missed. Captain America fucked up. Is that what you want me to admit? Because I'll give you that one for free. I was aiming for her shoulder and I _missed_."

"There never should have been a moment when you needed to aim a gun at another Avenger."

"You weren't there! You don't know what happened!"

"I know it ended up with Blake bleeding out on the battlefield."

Clarke lunges forward, presses the barrel of her gun to Raven's forehead. "It ended," she growls, "with Blake's powers on the fritz. It ended with me doing what was _necessary_ to bring my people home safe. All of them. Everything I did out there, I did to protect my people. You wouldn't happen to know anything about situations like that, would you?"

She can feel the heat coming off the primed and prepped repulsor against her cheek as Raven brings it closer to her face. "You can't compare an individual to a city."

"Maybe not, but I can compare her to _Harper_."

"You're way out of line, Griffin."

"Oh, no, I think I'm exactly where I need to be. You've killed people to keep her alive. Don't you _dare_ threaten me for doing the same."

The repulsor grows brighter and Raven pushes forward, driving the gun barrel into her own skin. "Do it, shoot me. Keep telling yourself you're doing it for the right reasons. Keep lying-"

" _That is enough!_ " Clarke's back meets the far wall of the living room with a hollow thud, her head rebounding off the plaster and leaving an indentation. She slips to the floor under the weight of Mjolnir and claws at the handle with shaking hands.

"Let me _up_ , Lincoln."

Her scalp prickles with the static in the air as he looms over her. "You may not know how to live without a war, Captain, but do not attempt to begin another."

"I'm not trying to start something, I'm trying to _end_ it." The weight loosens from her chest, the hammer flying back into his outstretched hand, and she rolls to her feet, lands in fight stance, her fists up in front of her face. She finds Monty just back of Lincoln and Raven at the other end of the room, Bellamy in front of her with sparks rolling up his arms and Octavia leaning on her shoulder. "Tell her to stand down and I'll do the same."

"I'll stand down when she gets her overgrown mutt out of my house."

"The people in this tower are not the enemy," Lincoln says, his words punctuated by a rumble of thunder from outside. "The pair of you need to start acting like you understand that."

"It's Reyes that needs a reminder."

"You're the one who brought a nuclear weapon into my home."

Lincoln turns stormy eyes on Raven. "The Winter Soldier is not a threat at this moment in time."

"I'll believe that when I see it."

He tips his head towards the TV, and the rest follow his gaze to find the soldier prone on a couch, wrapped into a blanket with a hood pulled up over her head and only her eyes visible.

"She's okay?" Clarke whispers, eyes wide.

"I do not believe her to be a threat to anyone in the tower."

"Which is probably close enough to the same thing, right?" Octavia chirps, the corners of her mouth curling up in a smirk.

"O," Bellamy cautions, but he's got a smile on too.

"What? I'm just saying!" She elbows him hard in the ribcage, arm blurring with the speed of the motion, and then her face contorts in pain.

She groans and clenches hard at Bellamy's shoulder as her knees buckle, and she tears at the collar of her shirt with her other hand, pops buttons free in her attempt to get the fabric clear of her body.

Clarke catches sight of a circle of black just below her clavicle before Bellamy gets in front of his sister, his hands bracketing her face. "O, what's going on? O? Octavia, come on, talk to me-"

Octavia hunches over and spews her stomach contents across his shoes. Behind her on the TV screen, Lexa stands and recovers a firearm from beneath a couch cushion.

Clarke goes cold.

\--  
  
The soldier paces the room, a caged tiger, shoulders bristling, teeth bared, ready to attack. She points the pistol at Clarke when she enters the living room with her hands above her head. "The building is under attack."

"I know, I know," she says in a rush, "I don't know who it is, but Octavia went down."

The soldier's eyes narrow, and she clenches her jaw hard. "Take me to her."

Clarke keys in the code on the wall to gain access to her uniform. “Just give me a second.” She strips down and pulls the suit on, too engrossed with zippers and buckles to catch the way the soldier's throat bobs at the sight of exposed skin. She turns back as she settles her helmet on her head, and slips her arm into the shield's straps.

The soldier pushes the sleeves of her henley up past her elbows and chambers a round. "Take me to Octavia."

\--

"They've bypassed the lower floors," Raven spits, powering up her repulsors as they run into the common room. "I don't know how they did it, but they're three stories down. FRIDAY is doing her best to keep them at bay."

The soldier crosses the room in three long strides and drops to her knees at Octavia’s side. She tears open Octavia's shirt to reveal a spray of black circles weaving together across her torso. Bellamy grabs her by the shoulder, fire licking up his arms as he tries to drag her away, but the soldier forces him back and traces the circle that lies dark over Octavia’s clavicle.

“Get the hell off her!" Bellamy shouts, red flames balling up in his palms. Clarke moves forward cocks back her arm as he points his hands at the soldier. "What the fuck did you do to her?!"

The soldier’s eyes flick to the fire and then back to Octavia, and she works her jaw. "The intruder is SHIELD."

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

"I-" The soldier clenches her fingers in her hair, tugging strands free from her braids. "It’s- Grenoble, in 1954. She stared right at me as I- It's- It burns inside you, feels like your veins are on fire-"

"Focus!" Bellamy screams. "What the hell is wrong with her?!"

"It's- they used it in Grenoble, there was an X gene outbreak- She thanked me when I-"

"Give me something better than that!"

"Lay off her!" Clarke strides forward and takes him by the elbow.

Bellamy whirls and shoots his palm out.

The ball of energy goes straight into Clarke's chest.

Clarke flies backwards, her vision flickering as she tumbles through the air. The wall knocks the breath out of her, and her head spins from the impact. The scene in front of her plays out all in a blur.

The soldier pushes herself up from where she kneels by Octavia. She lunges forward and grips Bellamy's throat with her metal hand, fingers closing around his trachea as his hands scrabble at her wrist, small flickers of energy jumping from finger to finger in his attempts to force her free.

"Keep your hands off the Mission Objective," the soldier growls, her face scant inches from his. Bellamy hooks his foot around her ankle in an attempt to take her off balance, but she only stands firmer. She brings the barrel of her pistol up under his chin. "Hurt her and I will kill you."

Clarke's mouth drops open.

Raven lets out a low whistle. "Well, shit."

“Tell me how we fix her,” Bellamy orders, rubbing at his throat, magic still flickering around his fingertips.

The soldier looks down at Octavia and clenches her jaw. “There’s nothing you can do.”

“There has to be _something_.”

“There is no cure.”

Bellamy curls his hands into fists, and tendrils of red lightning encircle his wrists, climb his arms. “I can fix it,” he mumbles, “I can fix it.”

“Don’t-” The soldier starts.

He lunges past her and slams his palms down on Octavia’s shoulders. “Come on, O, come on. Be okay, you’re okay.”

Octavia seizes when the sparks enter her body.

Bellamy rips his hands back as though he’s been burnt, and his lower lip trembles. The energy crawls ever higher, sparking around his shoulders.

“Soon enough, she’ll beg for you to end it,” the soldier says with a clench of her jaw. “She’ll plead for you to put a bullet between her eyes. When she does, I suggest you do so.”

“Shut up! Tell me how to fix this! Lincoln! Anyone!”

“There is no cure ,” the soldier repeats, tugging down the collar of her shirt to expose black circles staining her clavicle. “There is nothing you can do.”

“You’re wrong. You’re _wrong_!” Sparks pour from his skin, bolts of lightning twisting around his limbs, reaching out towards Octavia, spreading through the room.

“ _Don’t-”_ Clarke starts, taking a step towards him.

Monty vanishes from her peripheral.

She trips, stays on her feet, presses forward.

Raven goes next, her armour clattering to the ground. Beyond her, Lincoln blinks out of existence.

Clarke lunges, lands her hand on the soldier’s metal arm a moment before the soldier vanishes into thin air.

_"Lexa!"_

Everything goes white.


	18. Chapter 18

**September 13, 2014**

\--

Clarke rolls over, tangling herself in her sheets, and groans. In the five minutes she’s been awake and aware and refusing to open her eyes, her headache has ratcheted up exponentially, from dull and throbbing to an ice pick driven through her temple. She rubs fruitlessly at feverish skin, and the movement stirs up a stabbing pain in her ribs.

Her cheeks are wet with tears when she finally locates the hot pack that had slipped lower in the bed over the course of the night. Pressing the pack to her chest does little to lessen the pain, but she still sighs at the mild relief.

She turns onto her front, figuring that a constant aching pain will be more bearable than inconsistent jabs. The bed is unforgiving, though, and the pain tremendous.

When she drops her head, it hits the the mattress with an audible thunk, knives jabbing at her brain.

Clarke stills, raises a hand, pokes at the area under her pillow. Hard. Rolls again, pulls at her sheets… Not sheets. Sleeping bag.

This isn’t her bed in Reyes Tower.

She groans, flings a forearm across her face. If she doesn’t open her eyes then this won’t be real, right? Right.

She breaks after a moment, cracks her eyes open. The sunrise through the tent wall casts her skin a bilious shade of green.

What. Like a week in the bugout tent hadn’t been enough to last her the rest of her life. (Like months under tarps on blood-soaked ground hadn’t been enough to last her the rest of her life.) Swear to God, if Reyes thinks knocking her out and dropping her in the middle of nowhere is an appropriate response to their argument, she’s got another thing coming. Sure, Lincoln had been busy with Lex- Callaghan, but no way he’d let her get away with that kind of shit, right?

Right…?

There’s rustling outside and she stiffens, then reaches out for her shield, finding nothing but bare nylon to either side. She pushes herself to a seated position, tries to silence her groan but the sound slips through clenched teeth. She can hear footsteps now, crunching through dead leaves, and the zipper pull begins a slow ascent.

She raises her arms, pushing through the pain, and clenches her fists. Metal flashes in the sunlight as the tent flap is pulled back. She doesn’t know if she should be surprised or on guard, and sticks with cautious.

“You are awake.”

“Unfortunately.” She hisses. “What-”

“You have been unconscious for four days.” Callaghan crouches, swings her automatic around to her back as she steps through the tent flap.

“I don’t-” she coughs, mouth dry, ribs aching. “Where- what-”

“We are in Illinois.”

“That doesn’t-” Clarke shakes her head. “Raven- the Tower-”

Callaghan nods. “There is a 99.2% chance the others secured the Mission Objective.”

“No, I know we got her- Wait, what?” Clarke narrows her eyes. “What do you mean, ‘the others’?”

“Those that made it to the jet.” Callaghan pauses, tilts her head. “Do you not recall?”

“I don’t-” She presses at her temples, tries to hold back threatening tears. “I don’t know what happened,” she admits, setting her jaw. _I don’t know what’s real_ , she wants to continue, but she can’t form the words.

Callaghan has something akin to pity in her eyes when she looks up again, and Clarke’s breath burns hot and heavy in her chest. “I was able to secure the Mission Objective at the jet, but you had yet to make it through the opposition forces.”

Clarke shuts her eyes, tries to align that information with the vivid memories in her head, fails. “I still don’t understand. Help me understand.”

“The jet took off. I did not go with it.”

Clarke can remember that much, though it doesn’t jive, Octavia sprawled on the kitchen floor beside a half-assembled rifle, the soldier’s arms around… Octavia? Around Clarke?

“Why?” she presses.

“Because-” The soldier’s brow creases, and she presses the heels of her hands against her eyes. “Because- The Mission Objective-”

Clarke startles at the words, déjà vu swallowing her.

_Lightning scorching through her veins, her vision blurring-_

_“Keep your hands off the Mission Objective.”_

She shakes her head sharply, presses her fingertips into her temples. “You said you got Octavia safely to the Quinjet.”

The soldier nods.

“Then-”

“Safety of the Mission Objective is mission imperative.”

Clarke pushes down the growing ache in her gut. “When you said four days, did you mean-”

“It has been four days since the farm was ambushed.”

“And I’ve-”

“This is the first time you have woken.”

Bile burns up her throat. She swallows hard. “I need- Can you give me a sec?”

Callaghan looks her up and down before she assents, unfolding herself from her crouched position and exiting the tent. Clarke watches her wearily, absorbs the new information. She ignores the inconsistencies for now in favour of another realization that leaves her reeling.

The soldier left her. The soldier got Octavia to the ship.

Lex- Callaghan came back for her.

Callaghan came _back._

Clarke curls in on herself and begins to cry.

\--

Clarke limps out into the open at noon, arm shielding her ribs as she ducks through the tent flap. She cringes at a sharp burst of pain up her side, and furrows her brow. A beating’s not hurt this bad, or this long, in a while. Not in eighty years, anyways.

Callaghan’s eyes are already fixed on her when she turns from the tent zipper, and if Clarke didn’t know better she’d swear the soldier’s face was lined with concern.

“Hey,” she says, approaching Callaghan where she’s leaned up against a tree. The shield is propped beside her, dull and grimy. Clarke’s stomach wobbles at the sight.

The soldier nods at her. The direct sunlight gives Clarke the chance to examine her more thoroughly, and she winces at the fading bruise along Callaghan’s jawline. The dark circles under her eyes bring back memories of the Helicarrier, though this time they aren’t the product of the liberal application of eyeblack.

The metal arm hangs awkwardly at the shoulder, and Clarke inclines her head towards it. “What-”

“Powered SHIELD agents.”

“How did you-”

The soldier’s eyes go dark. “I followed the mission imperative.”

The harsh tone sends shivers down Clarke’s spine, but she shakes them off, takes a deep breath. “What’s next?”

“We keep moving east.” Callaghan doesn’t wait for her acknowledgement, just rises and begins to tear down the tent.

Clarke watches on, her mind racing.

\--

 ~~She~~ they run through the trees, steps silent despite the leaf litter, half an ear tuned to the respiratory rate of the blonde labouring along behind them. The Mission Objective is struggling, but every mile they put between themselves and their last contact with SHIELD increases likelihood of her survival by 6.2%.

The Mission Objective’s respiratory rate climbs, forty-two, forty-five, fifty-three, and her footsteps slow, come to a stuttering halt. They stop on a dime, spin to find the Mission Objective hunched over, hands on her knees, _exhaustion_. They tighten the hip and chest straps of the bugout bag as they approach the blonde. “I will carry you,” they say, hand outstretched. The seam of arm to flesh aches at the movement-

_Mission irrelevant._

But Asset incapacitation would decrease probability of Mission Objective survival by-

_Mission irrelevant._

The Mission Objective regards their hand, eyes narrowed. _Annoyance._

_Rephrase previous statement._

They try again. “I can carry you, if you so require.”

The Mission Objective shakes her head, chest still heaving. “I’m perfectly capable,” she ekes out between rapid breaths.

_Mildewed couch cushions, loose pencils rolling across warped floorboards. Clarke wheezing, scrambling to corral them. Eyes aching from rolling so hard. “Stubborn idiot.”_

She glares at Clarke, maintains eye contact for thirteen seconds before the blonde relents. Clarke raises an arm, lets herself be hefted up across her shoulders.

The lift is easier now than it was before Clarke had awoken; Clarke adapts to the shifts, adjusts her position to maintain their balance across uneven ground. But her brain goes fuzzy for moment when the blonde’s arm swings, fingers grazing the outside of her thigh. She stumbles a step, has to work hard to remain upright under the weight of the bugout bag and the stupid shield and the idiot supersoldier who-

_Not mission adjacent._

She catches herself and carries on.

\--

Clarke has been asleep on her shoulders for the better part of an hour when she realizes they’ve picked up a pair of hangers-on. They flank her, fifty yards back of her 4 and 8 o’clock. She considers pressing on despite them for 3.4 seconds, but scouts mean infantry are on their way.

_Dispatch threat._

She skirts around a tree, carefully lowers Clarke to the ground in the lee of the trunk and then lays the rucksack beside her. Clarke’s eyes snap open, but she holds the blonde down by the shoulder, covers her mouth with her hand. Clarke relaxes, locks eyes with her, face _soft as-_

_Not mission adjacent._

She slides a knife from her boot and stands, presses her back to the trunk. The scouts’ footsteps had ceased along with hers and she holds her breath, waits-

 _There._ The crackle of a radio, muted but not quickly enough to prevent location. She weighs the blade in her hand and looks down at the shield strapped to the bugout bag. If she could-

_Breach of protocol._

She pulls another knife from the small of her back and rounds the trunk, staying low to the ground. The agent startles as she comes into view, one hand going for his radio, the other for his gun. He secures neither before she slits his throat.

She cuts through the strap of his gun in the same movement, untangles it from his limp limbs as he slumps to the ground. She raises it smoothly, fixes the other scout in the sights-

A metallic blur drops him just as her index finger tenses on the trigger.

She glares over at Clarke, supporting herself against the trunk. Clarke gives her a smile- _tired_ , but then her eyes drift down to the scout at her feet.

 _Rage_.

Clarke clenches her fists and limps towards her, her face a thundercloud. “You didn’t need to do that.”

She takes a step back as Clarke moves closer, registers _surprise_ in herself at the involuntary movement.

“You can’t just kill everyone who comes after us.”

She attempts to stay steady despite Clarke advancing further into her space, but something in the space behind her left eye does a little flip and when their back hits bark they lock their jaw and raise their chin.

_Report._

“I am doing what is required to obey the mission imperative,” they state, fingertips searching for purchase in the tree at their back. Blood and gristle makes skin and metal slip over bark. Against protocol to let it sit, will adhere to internal mechanisms and cause critical failure of already-malfunctioning limb if sanitation and maintenance not undertaken. They barely contain a shudder at the thought of the hose.

“I won’t let you.”

“You were willing for me do those things at the farmhouse.”

_They long to bathe in the heat of the thermobaric warhead, melt the last remnants of ice that lurk deep within their marrow-_

“The mission imperative has not changed since then.”

The blonde narrows her eyes. “Yes, it has.”

“Negative. Mission imperative remains ‘protect'. Only the Objective has changed.”

“And the Objective _objects_ to you killing in her name.” _Mockery_. Product of a small mind. The blonde tenses as though she’s about to take another step forward, then locks eyes with them and moves back instead. Their fingers relax from the divots they’ve torn through tree bark as the blonde turns to collect her shield.

“You need to leave,” they call after her once she’s moved far enough away that their brain has stopped going fuzzy around the edges.

The blonde wheels around, shield in hand, and stalks back over. “Not this bullshit again.”

_Again?_

“If you will not allow the termination of enemy forces, then your probability of survival would be 43% higher if you…” They pause, frowning. Short-term recall demonstrates that the Mission Objective has never displayed much of an instinct towards self-preservation-

Face soft as punches rain down-

_Re-_

Hair-trigger gutshot-

_Res-_

“Then finish it _finish it finish it_ -”

_RE-_

Blood seeps through fingers pressed against entry wound to the abdomen-

“-because life should be about more than just surviving _surviving surviving-”_

WeightlessloudloudLOUD _COLD_

Empty blue eyes, blonde hair drifting in the current-

Mission abort.

**_RESET-_ **

Mission _abort_.

**_RESET._ **

**_TERMINATE._ **

_Mission. Abort._

Recalibrate imperative.

_Mission select_

**_RESET-_ **

_Mission select._

**_RESET._ **

_Mission. Select._

**_RESETRESETRESETRESETRESE-_ **

_MISSION SELECT_

_WAKE UP_

They kick up towards the light-

She blinks. “We’ll remain together.”

“Oh, thanks for your _permission_ ,” Clarke gripes, coming to a halt in front of her.

The muscles in the soldier’s cheeks ache when corners of her mouth curl upwards. “In all likelihood you’d get in more trouble if I left you alone than will find us if we stay together.”

“Jerk,” Clarke mutters.

 _Punk._ “You can’t deny that it’s the truth.”

Clarke scowls.

She wants to smooth the creases from Clarke’s brow.

_Not mission adjacent._

But it would-

**_Not mission adjacent._ **

She pushes away from the tree and leaves a wide berth between the two of them as she moves towards the corpse. The movements are routine: retrieve knife sheaths (ankle, thigh, hip, small of back), retrieve pistols (hip, two in shoulder holsters), retrieve SMG (knot strap back together), destroy communications (radio on chest pack, crush under heel). The grip of the M5 is tacky with blood, takes a minute with the hem of her shirt to get clean.

Not routine: every time she glances over her shoulder, Clarke is there frowning at her.

She crosses through the trees to relieve the other agent of their weaponry and Clarke trails after her. A blade is in her hand the moment she sees the rise of the second scout’s chest.

Clarke clears her throat.

Her hand tightens around the handle, but she forces the blade back into the sheath on her thigh. Inhale. Exhale.

 _Disarm_.

She uses the agent’s own cuffs to secure his wrists behind his back. He stirs as she strips him of his knives, but the careful application of fist to chin sends him back into unconsciousness.

“Why?”

She spins towards Clarke’s voice. “We had to leave the last fight before I could recover most of our weaponry.”

Clarke inhales deeply through her nose, holds the breath, releases it slow and steady. “Not that. We could have questioned him-”

“He has no information that would be of use to us.”

“Oh, no? Knowing how they found us wouldn’t be helpful?”

She shakes her head. “There’s an 89% probability that a transmitter has-”

Clarke pauses, bites her lip, and then her eyes widen. “Your- Reyes finds- _Found_ -” She stops to compose herself. “There’s one in your arm.” She starts forward, reaches for the metal arm, pauses halfway. “Can you-”

She sets the stack of weaponry aside and takes a knee. Clarke inches forward and she closes her eyes.

Maintenance routine: no movement, no sound.

Subroutine (conditional): punishment.

The handler takes the limb’s wrist and elbow in her hands, rotates the arm back and forth. Their pain levels are elevated above baseline, fire from the seam of the arm radiating across their back. They bite their lip as the handler manipulates the limb, taste iron on their tongue when their teeth break skin after a sudden twist. The plates grate together, jar their bones. Too long without proper maintenance may cause critical failure of the limb. Critical failure will lead to punishment.

The handler speaks, but her words stretch in their ears. They keep their eyes closed, mouth shut.

The handler speaks again, soft and calm. "Can you look at me, please?”

Not routine: the handler pleading.

They turn their head, open their eyes. The handler-Mission Objective meets their gaze before motioning down towards the exposed insides of the limb. “Do you know what it would look like?”

_Radio set lying gutted on a blanket on the edge of a field of mud. Frozen fingers fumbling with a spool of wire._

_“Good thing you're here. You always were the sciency one out of the two of us.”_

“There's no space for it in the forearm.” She attempts to flex the shoulder to gain better sightlines within the upper limb, but the movement grinds to a halt with a dull crunch.

_Critical failure._

_Await punish-_

She grits her teeth, looks from what she can glimpse of the mechanism to Clarke and back again, tries to come up with a solution.

_Internal workings of upper segment of limb unknown._

Real helpful. “Anything in there look non-Russki?”

“It’s all Greek to me.”

She groans. “Anything sitting perpendicular to the arm?”

“There’s a black band-” Clarke reaches out, hesitant again.

“There's no fine pressure sensors in it. Won't feel a thing."

Clarke reaches into the arm. She tugs slightly, then stops. “I don’t want to break-”

“Take it out."

Clarke nods and takes a deep breath. A thin strip of matte black metal comes loose in her hand, and she pulls it completely free of the arm, brings it into the soldier’s line of sight. “Is this it?”

She surveys it, _global tracker, fixed to bottom of sedan, three hundred and fourteen meters, account for windspeed and elevation-_

“Affirmative.” Clarke moves as though to help her with the arm, but the soldier pulls back and turns, quickly resecuring the plating. “Ditch it.” She bends to lash the new arsenal to the rucksack, rises and pulls one strap over her right shoulder, works the other up onto her left.

Clarke stares at the transmitter for a long moment before she cocks her arm and pitches it into the trees. “I guess we should get a move on before the cavalry arrives. How about you give me a better idea of where we're headed than ‘east'.”

“Safe house.”

“Don’t be a jerk.”

_Punk._

“Chicago.”


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: sexual assault

**September 14, 2014**

There are weeds pushing up through the cracks in the sidewalk in front of the safe house, but the keypad hasn’t lost power, and the last set of codes she’d been provided with still grant her access to the office building. The receptionist’s desk is strewn with loose papers, the drawers left sitting open. When she runs a fingertip across the desktop it leaves a trail through the layer of dust.

She looks up from flipping through the paperwork, her gaze immediately finding Clarke, standing stockstill in the centre of the entranceway. She follows the blonde’s line of sight, and her jaw tightens when her eyes land on the graffiti covering the walls of the atrium. She waves Clarke inside and drops her hand to seek out the holster at the small of her back, the heft of the grip in her hand doing little to settle her unease.

_“[Hold them down. Look at me, Petrushka.]”_

“Stay away from the windows,” she cautions. Slipping back into mission imperative actions does as little as the presence of her gun to push the graffiti out of her mind.

Clarke crosses the room towards her, and she moves on from the desk, feet carrying her towards the third of four identical doors without a second thought.

_“[Put the Asset on the transport. They need to be in Texas before the target arrives.]”_

The wood cracks with a quick boot underneath the knob, and she leads with her right shoulder when she bulls her way through the remnants of the door.

The layer of dust coating the steps into the basement is thicker than that in the lobby, billowing up from around her boots as she makes her way down the stairs. The door at the foot of the steps is heavier, metal-clad, likely too much for her in her weakened state. However, the keypad lights up at her touch and she’s through it in a moment.

Her first step inside has her gasping for breath, but it’s not because of the dust. The Chicago safe house was solely for report and resupply-

_“[Mission report-]”_

It had never been an active control site, and thus there’s no tank, no reconditioning chair.

That still doesn’t mean she can look directly at the seat bolted to the floor in the middle of the room, the thick cuffs hanging from the arms, without a fist tightening in her chest and the spot beyond her left eye going fuzzy.

_“[Mission report, Petrushka. Now.]” The handler- Ontari, that bitch Ontari- Ontari’s grip is firm on her chin, dragging her up so they’re eye to eye. There are dark flecks of dried blood in the gnarls of Ontari’s scarred face-_

\--

Clarke paces behind Callaghan as the soldier scours the room. She locks her jaw, but her eyes still burn with angry tears as she looks from the stained chair to Callaghan and back again. The crude images upstairs linger in the back of her mind, and the statement slips out before she can stop it. “You’ve been here before.”

“I- There was-” Callaghan starts, right hand going to her forehead. “November 2nd, 1963,” she continues, her voice going stiff and certain. “The target’s motorcade was intended to take the Expressway from O’Hare. One bullet to the head. If the opportunity did not arise during his arrival, the shot was to be taken from the rooftop of the West Jackson Boulevard site.” She breaks the padlock on one of the lockers lining the rear wall with a twist of her metal hand, jolting hard at the motion before settling and opening the door.

Clarke takes an unconscious step forward, forces her arm back to her side the moment she realizes she’s reached out. “Did the opportunity arise?”

Callaghan shakes her head, the movement truncated by another wince. “The trip was cancelled. The target had been tipped off.” Her hand tightens on the locker door, warps the metal beyond repair. “As a result, conditional subroutines were followed.”

Clarke glances back towards the chair, her brain superimposing the graffiti, her nails biting through her palms. She raises a hand spotted with blood to cover her mouth as bile rises in her throat.

\--

She drops her head, drives her right fist into the unopened locker beside her. The shock of pain kickstarts her breathing and she draws in a ragged breath, and then another.

_Self-injury is a breach of protocol._

She sneers, slams her hand back into the dented metal.

**_Breach of protocol._ **

She shakes her head sharply, throws a third punch for good measure. There’s a satisfying crunch from one of her knuckles.

**_BREACH-_ **

The seam at her shoulder aches when she uses the metal arm to tear the open locker door off its hinges and send it flying across the room. She turns to watch the door screech to a halt against the far wall, and finds Clarke watching her with wet eyes.

“I didn’t say anything,” Clarke says.

She furrows her brow, gives the blonde a nod in the hopes it will hide her confusion, and returns to the open locker. A brief survey turns up nothing useful to the current mission; pairs of handcuffs and-

_There are dark flecks of dried blood in the gnarls of Ontari’s scarred face, and in the space behind her left eye she knows it’s her own. Ontari’s hand slips from her chin to her throat, fingers tightening, nails driving into her skin._

_“[Tell me, Petrushka, how easily did you let the plan slip? Did they promise you freedom, the American Dream? You well know that it’s built on the backs of starving children dying in lice-infested ditches. After all, before we saved you you were one of them.]”_

_Ontari crouches in front of her, takes the first pair of cuffs hooked around the chair leg and snaps it about her ankle, forces her legs to splay open as she does the same with the second. Ontari takes hold of her chin again, leans in close enough that the handler’s breath skates across her cheek._

_“[No, I’m sure it took a lot less than that. A touch-]” Ontari runs a hand up her thigh, and her skin burns at the touch. “[A look, and they’d have had you on your knees begging for more-]”_

_She slams her head forward. Ontari’s nose gives way._

_“[Feisty little bitch, aren’t you?]” There’s blood on Ontari’s teeth when she grins, sharklike. “[Guess leaking the plans isn’t the only thing I’ll have to punish you for. All the better for me to enjoy.]” The hand on her chin drops back to her neck, fingers pressing on blood vessels. Ontari unclasps the soldier’s belt, slips her hand down the front of her fatigues, unceremoniously shoves three fingers into her core._

_The soldier’s vision goes grey at the edges, and when the darkness comes, she lets it swallow her whole._

Her back screams as a pair of cuffs comes to pieces in her hands, and she tosses them aside, tears the next locker door off its hinges. And the next, and the next, until the whole bank of lockers has been laid bare and the only thing she can focus on is the pain radiating down her spine.

\--

“Hey. Hey!” Clarke shoots forward, and this time she can’t stop her hand from landing on Callaghan’s shoulder. “Breathe. It’s okay, just breathe.” Callaghan freezes at the contact, her muscles taut under Clarke’s palm. “They don't own you.”

“Don’t they?” Callaghan gives a caustic laugh. “They took everything.”

She shakes off Clarke’s hand and begins unpacking gear from the lockers, muttering under her breath, and Clarke can’t tear her eyes away. It’s become clearer with every moment in the safe house that the Winter Soldier file was incomplete, that Callaghan’s ‘conditional subroutines’ went far beyond the physical torture laid out in those pages. She can’t understand how Callaghan’s holding herself together so well, when all Clarke wants to do is hunt down every single HYDRA agent left on the planet and tear them limb from limb.

She uncurls her fists to take the backpack Callaghan shoves towards her, moves to the desk bolted to the floor in one corner of the room. She tears the drawers open, the locks giving way easily, and whistles at the piles of cash. “That’s going to be helpful,” she muses, removing a stack and running her thumb over the embossed band.

“How much?” Callaghan pauses in the midst of disassembling a semiautomatic to look over towards her.

“Twenty thousand, maybe.” She empties the first drawer into the bag, then pulls a sealed plastic bag stuffed with documents from the second and removes a passport. She flips it open to find Callaghan’s face staring back at her. “You’ve got a paperwork dead drop here, too.”

“Those are likely to be compromised. There should still be a lighter in the bugout bag.”

“If I use that, you’re going to have to stop me from burning this entire hellhole to the ground.”

The corner of Callaghan’s mouth jumps, but she shakes her head as she strides towards Clarke. “That would attract exactly the wrong kind of attention.” She hands her another backpack and two duffle bags. “There’s a change of clothes in the backpack. Go up to the lobby and I’ll meet you up there.” She ushers Clarke towards the door and closes it behind her before Clarke realizes what’s happening.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” she shouts, pressing her palm flat against the door.

A metallic _crunch_ is the only response she receives.

\--

When Callaghan reenters the lobby she’s got a fresh set of clothes on and the slightest trace of a skip in her step. Clarke looks her up and down, gaze lingering on the unbuttoned collar of the henley, the strangest feeling of déjà vu tugging at her.

_“You can trust me. I know how difficult that’s got to be, but I promise, you can trust me.”_

She shoves the memory- Dream? No, had Blake- She shoves the memory aside and takes a step towards Callaghan. “We need to get to New York.”

The soldier freezes. “No.”

“Because it’s- What do you mean, ‘ _no’_?”

“It would be contrary to the mission imperative.”

Clarke clenches her jaw. “Would it also be ‘contrary to the mission imperative’ for me to smack you over the head with my shield?”

“Yes.”

“Getting to New York is the only way we figure out what the hell is going on.”

“The only thing of any consequence to me is your safety. Letting you dive headfirst into something you have no grasp on risks that.”

“Then help me get a grasp on it! Explain to me how I ended up here!”

“I told you already-”

“Yes, that! When I woke up, you said I’d been unconscious since the farmhouse.”

“Because you had been.”

“I hadn’t. None of what you told me happened, happened.”

“What are you talking about?”

“We’d already made it to New York. We were in New York, and then I woke up in a tent in the middle of Illinois.”

“I don’t understand.”

Clarke spins away, threading her hands through her hair as she looks down at the floor through a sheen of tears. She takes a deep breath, exhales slowly. “We were in New York, and then we weren’t. The transmitter was out of your arm, and then it wasn’t. Octavia didn’t get on the Quinjet, and then she did. But if I shot her-” The dreams- memories? The memories hit-

_Madri lie scattered across the clearing._

_“It tore open her aorta- She’d be dead if-”_

_Sparks jump over Octavia’s front when Bellamy’s hands land on her, encircle the entry wound._

_Everything goes white._

_“It did not hit anything critical-”_

Her fingers curls into fists in her hair. "I shot her-”

_Klaxons sound through the Tower as Bellamy looks from Avenger to Avenger frantically, searching for an answer._

_“Tell me how to fix this!”_

_Sparks cascade from his hands, writhing, growing, bolts of red lightning arcing through the room._

_Clarke’s hand lands on Lexa’s arm as the soldier winks out of existence._

_Everything goes white._

“I shot her," she gasps as the realization strikes, "and then he made it so I didn’t.”


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> come chat at my [tumblr](http://hedahawkeye.tumblr.com)

Clarke tugs her toque snug over her ears as her eyes flick over towards the TV screen tucked back behind the departures board. She sprawls out a bit, kicks a foot out so the garbage bag holding the shield is tucked into the space between her leg and the seat, tries to look more like a bored college student and less like a fugitive. Less like her headshot is blown up on every TV in the station.

She can see Callaghan out the corner of her eye, sitting tall, ball cap pulled low over her face and gloved hands curled around the rolled up newspaper resting in her lap. Callaghan’s head jerks up when a blonde woman sits down beside her and taps her wrist, and Clarke’s hand goes towards the garbage bag, her eyes flicking towards the nearest exit.

But then Callaghan laughs, just loud enough to be heard across the room, and frees a section from the paper and hands it to the woman. The sound is a fist to Clarke’s chest; she hadn’t known Callaghan could laugh like _that_ , that the soldier had been trained to joke and flirt and integrate herself. She breathes in through her nose, exhales, takes a moment to glare daggers at the blonde woman before forcing herself to tamp down the jealousy roiling in her gut.

The final boarding call booms out through the station and Clarke stands, uses a brief overhead stretch to take a final look around her. Callaghan grabs her duffle and heads towards the tracks, and Clarke nods to herself before she follows, keeping her distance.

\--

They wedge themselves into the compartment, Callaghan swiftly checking the washroom before she’ll let Clarke any further into the space. They shuffle their bags up onto the top bunk so that there’s space to breathe, at least, and Clarke perches on the edge of the bottom mattress.

She glances over towards Callaghan, standing at the window with her hands behind her back, and sighs. “Sit down, would you? I can’t think with you looming over everything.”

The soldier shakes her head, shifting her weight to keep her balance as the train pulls away from the station. “I don’t… want… to sit.” She turns from the window, crosses towards the door. “I’m going to sweep the train.”

Clarke moves in unison, installing herself between Callaghan and the door. She raises a hand to slow the soldier and Callaghan can’t stop before the touch lands. They both start, Clarke ripping her hand away. “Sorry, just- You’re not going anywhere until you let me look at your arm.”

“It’s not my-”

Clarke shakes her head. “I don't want to hear it. You’ve been nursing it since I woke up.”

“The arm is fine.”

“Want to try that again?”

Callaghan curls her lip, eyes darting to the side before she huffs out her answer. “It hurts.”

“Was that so hard?” Clarke pulls her backpack down onto the bottom bunk, pats the mattress beside the bag before she unzips it. “Have a seat.”

Callaghan takes a wide tack when she navigates around Clarke, and then drops stiffly onto the bunk. Clarke closes her hand around her tool roll, stuffed deep in the base of the bag, and glances up at Callaghan as she works on freeing it.

Vacant eyes stare back.

The tool roll pops free and she sets it aside for a moment in favor of shifting back to give Callaghan as much room as she can in the tight space. The safe house flashes behind her eyelids when she blinks. She has to fight hard against the instinctual drive to close the gap between them, to reach out and pull the soldier into her arms and shield her from the world. “Can I-” she asks, her voice breaking. She drags a hand across her face, then takes a deep breath. “Is it okay if I-”

Callaghan shakes her head sharply, bottom lip pinned between her teeth.

“We need to do something to it, okay?” She can’t remember whether the soldier had gone cold like this in the forest, realizes with a sinking feeling that she’d been too focused on removing the transmitter to pay much mind to how Callaghan had reacted. “We can’t just leave it like this.”

“The arm is operating at an acceptable level of function,” Callaghan replies, her voice monotone, gaze fixed on the wall. “Proper maintenance requires equipment available only at an active control site.” She glances towards Clarke, jaw clenched. “You- You- You put us on this train. All I’m doing is ensuring that it’s safe.”

Clarke lets her head drop back against the wall with a thud, stares up at the ceiling. She roughly wipes at the tears budding in the corners of her eyes. “Fine. Go sweep the train.”

She waits until the corridor door clicks shut before she lets her legs give out from under her, sliding down the wall until she’s seated on the floor. The sound of Callaghan’s laughter rolls through her head, and she pinches the bridge of her nose and exhales slowly. Going from that to the blank slate of the soldier and back again, over and over, feels like whiplash. The fatigue of it all is heavy in her bones.

\--

The soldier pauses for a moment in the corridor, listening for the click of the compartment door sliding shut behind her. She takes a deep breath and forces her hands to stop shaking before she sets off down the car. Her fingers brush over her arsenal under the guise of smoothing down her jacket, and the comfortable heft of the weaponry beneath her palms settles the turmoil in her stomach.

She replaces unease with wariness as she stalks down the car, and so when someone reaches out to tap her wrist the handle of her knife is in her palm before she can stop herself. She looks down, and the woman from the station is there, blonde hair pulled back above stone grey eyes. Her grip on the knife tightens, _suspected_ -

The woman smiles softly as she looks up at her through her eyelashes. “Thanks again for the paper. I _really_ appreciate it.” _Oh-_

She forces the corners of her mouth to turn up into a matching smile, her cheeks sore at the movement. “You’re welcome.” She doesn’t wait for the woman’s response before she’s off again, eyes darting from seat to seat, face to face.

She squeezes into a corner to allow an attendant to pass with a drink cart, but there’s still not enough room, and the cart runs over the toe of her boot. The attendant’s head jerks up, hands jumping forwards to the tray, and she reaches around to the holster in the small of her back, hand going tight around the pistol grip.

He grabs the tops of teetering stacks of glasses, steadying them as the cart stills. “Sorry about that, ma’am,” he says, head bowed. She lets her fingers loosen and nods stiffly.

She reaches the back of the final car and pauses at the window, half her focus on the reflection in the glass, the other half on the tracks disappearing into swirling snow. There’s a tug at the spot behind her left eye, and she raises her right hand, presses the heel of her palm into her eye until the feeling fades.

She stares out into the white for a moment longer before turning and heading back up the train, eyes flicking lazily between passengers as she hurries along.

Her brain is crowing out _mission success_ before she’s even reached their compartment. Part of her wants roll her eyes, but the satisfied glow that accompanies the words stops that action in its tracks.

The compartment door is in view when there’s a tug on her sleeve, and she looks down to find the blonde gazing back. The paper is folded open on her tray table, the crossword puzzle partially filled in.

“Hey, sorry to bother you again.”

She shakes her head. “It’s okay.”

The woman smiles. “I’m stuck on this one clue. Maybe you could help me.” The woman beckons her closer. “18-Across. ‘First man-made satellite to orbit the earth’, seven letters. Third letter ‘u', seventh letter ‘k'. Any ideas?”

“I don’t-”

“Wait, I think I’ve got it!” The woman looks up at her, smile stretching into a grin. “It’s ‘[Sputnik]’.”

The space behind her left eye does a backflip.

“[Regiment. Arcane.]”

She shakes her head, her right hand dropping to the woman’s wrist, her left inching towards the small of her back. “Don’t.”

“[Glycerin. Downdraft. Icepick.]”

Bone grinds beneath her fingers. “ _Don’t_.”

“[ _Vertigo_.]”

“[Mission objective?]”

“Let go of my arm, soldier.”

Their fingers go limp. They withdraw their hand.

“You’re going to go to the door at the front of the car. No funny business. I’ll be right behind you. [Obey, Petrushka].”

They walk up the train car, eyes fixed forward, the handler close behind them. She has the barrel of a pistol pressed into the small of their back. They can kill her in seventy-three different ways before her trigger finger even moves.

They pass the compartments near the front of the car and the space behind their left eye twists. They stop in their tracks, flinch, hand darting towards their temple. They have forgotten… _something_... The woman digs the pistol into their skin, drawing their attention back to the mission, and they straighten and continue forward.

They come to a halt at the front of the car, lapse back into a rest stance. _Await further instruction._

“What are you doing, soldier? Open it.”

They slide the door open and step through onto the platform between the two cars, their right hand finding purchase on the back of the locomotive cab, keeping them steady. The handler shoves the gun into their spine again, shouts something, but the wind is deafening-

_“Grab my hand!”_

_Reset._

Snow whipping across her face as she clings to frigid metal.

Falling, sky and cold and white-

_Reset-_

Wind howling in her ears, drowning out everything, even her screams.

Pain, frozen-

**_Reset-_ **

Hands on her jacket, blood on the snow. Daggers down her spine with every movement of her shoulder, her arm stretched to the side, dark blue, light blue, white with frostbite.

Sky blue summer-

**_Re-_ **

Ice crystals down her back and foreign words in her ears. Drill, saw, cut, scar, _hurt_.

Navy armour, pale skin. Dirt-streaked face, piercing sky blue summer gaze.

Over her shoulder she catches a glimpse of blonde.

_“Lexa!”_

Blonde and shock and fear. Falling-

_Save her._

The pistol to the back of her skull sends her toppling forward, the metal hand barely catching hold of a ridge across the train siding. “[Obey, Petrushka,]” the handler shouts, only just audible over the wind.

She pulls herself upright, head ringing, mouth full of blood where she’s bitten her lip, and looks back at the woman. “No.”

The handler’s throat bobs and she shifts her grip on the opposite car, raises her gun in a shaky hand. “[Sputnik. Regiment.]”

The spot behind her left eye goes berserk. She shakes her head, grounds herself in the pain, in the noise, in a world deadened by snow.  “No.”

“[Arcane, glycerin, downdrafticepick _vertigo_.]”

She grins.

The handler gulps.

“No,” and when she says it she can’t help but laugh.

The handler fires.

The metal arm whips around, bullet deflecting off the palm, and then she drives forward, fingers wrapping around the barrel of the gun. She wrenches it from the woman’s hand with ease and tosses it aside.

Her smirk fades quickly in the wake of the fist glancing along her cheekbone. She lurches back, finding a handhold with her right hand while she parries blows with the left. The woman’s fists send vibrations up her arm, jolting through her shoulder with bursts of pain.

The joint catches mid-block, the handler’s fist slipping over the plating and landing the punch on the side of the traincar. The metal warps beneath the force of the blow.

The soldier whips her right arm around, catching the handler’s opposite wrist as the woman lunges forward with a knife outstretched. “You're-” She forces the metal arm around to grasp the handler’s free wrist, the joints groaning in complaint.

The woman wrestles against the hold, spewing a litany of curses that skip half-recognized across her mind. Then she pauses, her mouth twisting into a lupine grin before she utters her next words. “[Trifecta. Antony.]”

Searing pain tears through the soldier’s skull. She tightens her fingers around the handler’s wrist, presses and twists until the knife drops from the woman’s hand and disappears beneath the next carriage.

“[Herald. Pandemic.]”

Her sight goes dim around the edges, and the metal hand reaches for the handler’s throat.

“[ _Occlu-_ ]”

She flings the handler out into the darkness. The woman dies screaming.

She tries to hook the metal arm through the ladder, but it grinds to a halt halfway through the movement and she has to twist desperately to find a handhold, fighting to remain upright despite weak knees. She maneuvers herself back to the door and slips through, pausing in the vestibule to rub at her face with her right hand, scrub something tacky away with the heel of her palm.

Her feet move on autopilot, carry her through a routine she doesn’t quite remember learning. _Retreat, resupply, reassess_. Scanning the corridor outside their compartment door. Hunched over the sink scrubbing her face clean. Seated on the edge of the bunk, staring unseeing at the opposite wall.

The ringing in her ears abates enough that she can hear a voice, though the words are still indistinct. She lifts her head to meet Clarke’s gaze.

Clarke motions towards her face, her eyes stony. “What happened?”

“I broke protocol.” She’s not sure why both cheeks ache, when the handler had only landed a punch to the right one.

\--

Clarke crouches in front of Callaghan, gaze jumping from blood-spackled skin to cradled arm to torn jacket before settling on a spot somewhere to the right of Callaghan’s ear. “What do you mean?”

“I broke protocol,” she repeats slowly, carefully.

Clarke’s mouth goes dry. She swallows. “Do you know who I am?”

“Griff. Been protecting your sorry ass since grade school.”

“You-” Clarke sits back on her heels, her head spinning. She takes a deep breath, and then another. “Do you- Do you know who you are?”

Callaghan stills, face going hard as she raises her chin. “Sergeant Alexandra Elizabeth Callaghan of the 107th Division. 3-2-5-5-7-0-3-8."

“Lexa,” Clarke breathes, and the name falls from her mouth like a prayer.

Lexa grins.


	21. Chapter 21

Clarke’s hands are shaking when she reaches out. “You’re- Oh, _Lexa-_  Do you- You- You remember?”

Silence hangs between them, Clarke's heart sinking with every passing moment.

“Yes.”

Clarke gasps out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “How much?”

Lexa inhales, exhales, her lip quivering. “Enough to know I’m Lexa Callaghan. Not enough not enough not enough-” She pauses, shakes her head sharply. “Not enough to _be_ her.”

“Lexa…” Clarke sways forward, aching to close the distance between them. She brushes her fingertips over Lexa’s cheekbones, holds Lexa's face in her hands, and Lexa doesn’t flinch. Clarke swallows around the lump in her throat, fighting back tears when Lexa raises her hand and rests it on Clarke’s forearm, when she runs her palm over Clarke’s sleeve and then closes her fingers around Clarke’s wrist. “I don’t-” Clarke catches her lip between her teeth, flicks her eyes up towards the ceiling before dropping her gaze back to Lexa. “I never-” She wavers a moment before surging forward into Lexa’s lap, off balance and sobbing, and Lexa releases Clarke’s wrist so she can wrap her arm around her. “I didn’t,” she starts, stops, buries her face in the crook of Lexa’s neck. “I _would have_ -”

Lexa presses her face into Clarke’s hair. “It’s okay, Clarke,” she whispers, hand rubbing circles between Clarke’s shoulder blades. “It’s okay, I’m here now. I’m here. I’m here. I’m here.”

Clarke nods, tears hot on her cheeks, and takes a shuddering breath. A fraction of her thinks that maybe Lexa is reminding _herself_ , but she shoves that thought away, focuses instead on curling her fingers in the back of Lexa’s jacket.

Her nails scrape across the cheap polyester, and Lexa shivers beneath her. “I remember _this,_ ” she murmurs, and Clarke can all but feel the smile against the side of her head. “But I think-” She pauses, nudges Clarke with her chin. “Were you... smaller?”

Clarke releases a wet laugh. She raises her head, rolls her eyes. “Don’t be rude, you jerk.”

Lexa's grin widens. “I think- I think- I think you know what I meant.”

“Okay, yeah, I was smaller.” Clarke smiles wide enough to match Lexa’s grin. “But so were you.” She draws her hand back and pokes Lexa softly in the left shoulder.

Lexa jolts backwards with a sharp inhale.

Clarke tears herself away, toppling from Lexa’s lap and skidding across the floor until her back is pressed against the wall. “Sorry- I didn’t-” She reins in fluttering hands and steadies herself. “Did I do something wrong? Are you hurt?”

Lexa shakes her head, her mouth pursed. “It’s not- It's not- It's- The handler- Shut _up_ -” She smacks the heel of her hand against her temple again and again.

Every impact feels like a punch to Clarke's gut. “ _Lexa_.”

She stills, gaze fixed somewhere beyond Clarke’s shoulder. “The arm is malfunctioning.”

Clarke reaches for Lexa’s left forearm, notes for the first time the awkward angle of the limb. “Okay, we can- We’ll get to the Tower and Raven will fix it and it’ll be fine.” She follows her words up with a nod that’s ten times more confident than she feels. “We'll be fine.”

Lexa’s eyes jump back to meet Clarke’s, and she arches an eyebrow. “You and I both know it’s- It's- It’s not gonna be that easy.”

Clarke nods, sighs. Just like Lexa- And she can barely tamp down her grin at the thought- Just like _Lexa_ to see right through her. “Well, what do you want to do about it for now?”

“There’s a sling. In the first aid kit.”

Clarke stands and reaches for the bags on the top bunk. “Jacket on or off?”

Lexa considers for a moment, her gaze drifting past Clarke towards the window. When Clarke turns to follow her gaze, the snowfall is just barely visible through the gap between the curtains. “On.”

\--

Clarke slides the sling between Lexa’s arm and her torso, working it into place so it’s fixed at the elbow. She reaches up to drape the corners over Lexa’s shoulders, and Lexa can't help but sway into her touch, her right hand falling to Clarke’s waist.

“Hey,” she murmurs, her thumb following the arch of Clarke's hipbone.

Clarke meets her eyes with a smile, and a soft “Hey, you.”

It's both familiar and not all at once. There's something out of focus and off-kilter about the whole thing, and it takes a sickening lurch to the flip behind her eye for it to click. “Seems to me I was-”

_“This might need stitches," she comments with a wry smile, running the pad of her thumb across Clarke's split lip. "Sometimes I think you like getting punched."_

“Seems to me I was the one who spent all my time fixing _you_ up.”

Clarke knots the corners of the sling together behind Lexa's neck, but she doesn't pull away afterwards, instead rests her hands on Lexa’s shoulders. “I'd like to be able to tell you that's an exaggeration, but...” She shrugs, and laughs softly. “Never known a fight I could walk away from.”

_“I'm not gonna fight you. You're my friend.”_

_“You're my mission!” They rain down blows, shoulder, chest, and the blonde doesn't flinch. “Fight_ back _!” Cheek, nose-_

_“Finish it.”_

Lexa tries to ignore the lump in her throat and drops her forehead to Clarke’s shoulder. Flames lick under her skin at the weight of Clarke's hands on her, but the discomfort is worth it for the looseness of Clarke's body and the ease in her gaze-

_The blonde's right eye is swollen shut, but her left remains steady, focused on them. “Finish it, Lexa.”_

She curls her fingers in Clarke’s shirt and tugs her closer.

Clarke raises one hand to cup the back of her head, the other coming to rest at her lower back, needles pricking across her skin, there's not enough oxygen in the world to fill her lungs- “Are you sure this is okay?”

She has to steel herself against the shivers that slide down her spine at the heat of Clarke's touch, but she still nods into the crook of Clarke’s neck. It's not terrible, she finds, if she can draw her focus to the if she can draw her focus to the if she can draw her focus to the-

She can't remember the last time someone had laid hands on her like this-

If she can draw her focus to the-

For comfort instead of punishment; had it been-

_The blonde sweeps their hair from their forehead and clear of the gash over their eyebrow. “[Did you forget how to watch your own back?]” She wipes something stinging across the cut, and shakes her head when they whimper. “[You need to fight to hang on to those memories, even if you can keep nothing else.]” She cups their jaw in her hand, strokes her thumb across the span of their cheek. “[I won’t always be there to protect you, Soldier. They-]”_

Oh.

_“[They won't ever let you-]”_

_Blood staining a starched white shirt-_

_“[They they they they they they won't ever let you remember me-]”_

_Orange flames blooming beyond shattered glass-_

No.

Move- Go- Small- Safe- Back- _Move_ wallblonde _wrong-_

“Lexa-”

 _Wrong_ , please, _don't-_

“Lexa, _please_ -”

She goes rigid at the weight of the blonde’s hand, can barely hear the words over the ringing in her ears.

“Tell me what you need, Lex,” she pleads. “ _Anything_.”

“I don't- _Ahn_ -” The voice is wrong, the shape is _wrong-_ “Space,” she continues, words that don't quite feel her own, and the blonde tears her hand away. “Quiet. Sleep.”

She does her best to avoid meeting the blonde's gaze as she gathers a gun from her duffle bag and settles to the floor with her back pressed to the wall, the furthest distance she can put between the two of them while inhabiting the same space. Something behind her left eye screams _wrongwrongwrongwrong_ and all she can do is listen.

\--

Clarke awakens to the train slowing. Lexa has shifted during the night, now slumped into the corner where the bunk meets the side of the traincar, cheek propped on the butt of her rifle, a line of drool dry on her chin. Clarke sneaks a peek at her watch, confirming that the stop is indeed scheduled, and tries to step over Lexa without waking her.

Despite her best efforts, Lexa stirs at the motion, releasing the gun and reaching out to lightly grasp her ankle. “Where y’goin’,” she slurs through a barely-contained yawn.

Clarke allows her palm to brush over Lexa’s head as she passes over her, a lump forming in her throat when Lexa’s body follows her touch as though drawn by a magnet. “To wash up.” She pauses at the door. “Might be more comfortable to sleep in the bed, you know.”

Lexa just grunts in response, her eyes drifting shut. Clarke lingers a moment, grips the door frame with a white knuckled hand, tries her best to align this Lexa to the litany of others she's been faced with over the past few days.

Lexa reclaims the rifle, and the shift of her posture, the press of her fingers against the trigger guard, is the Soldier through and through.

Clarke tugs the door closed firmly behind her and sighs at her reflection. There’s still a tinge of yellow across her right cheek from the week-old broken jaw… Has it really only been a week? She pokes at the discoloured skin and furrows her brow. In her first go-round, the jaw and the remainder of her wounds had been healed by time and the Cradle before they’d reached the Tower. Apparently being beaten to the brink of death and then comatose and unfed for four days were a set of circumstances much less conducive to accelerated healing. Who would have guessed.

She fully expects Lexa to still be tucked into the corner when she leaves the washroom, but instead the only part of her visible amidst the ball of covers is her mop of tangled hair. Sure, she has her back pressed to the wall, and Clarke’s positive that she could be up and lethal at half a moment’s notice, but she’ll still count it as a win. Score a half point for good guys.

\--

Lexa rises again a half hour later, rolling out of bed as the train slows again. Clarke watches her out of the corner of her eye between bites of a protein bar. Lexa's methodical, mechanical, as she slings her backpack over her good shoulder, ducks her head into the washroom, does a sweep of the bunk beds. Finally, she grabs her duffle bag and looks back towards Clarke, eyebrow raised. “Let's go.”

Clarke swallows before shaking her head. “We’ve still got twenty minutes until our stop.”

Lexa doesn't waver from her position at the door. “We’re getting off here.”

“What? No.” Clarke stands and dusts crumbs from her jacket before poking a finger at Lexa. “This was not the plan.”

“Not _your_ plan,” Lexa replies coldly. “Grab your things.” She waits a moment, but Clarke stands pat. “Grand Central is out of the question. Puts us on Reyes’ doorstep.”

“And that’s a problem? What happened to getting to the Tower?”

“We can’t.”

“Lexa-”

Lexa grabs her arm. “You need to trust me. Get your gear. We need to go. Now.”

Clarke looks from Lexa's grip on her wrist to pleading eyes and back again. “Okay. Where are we going?”

“Somewhere safe.”

“This place going to bring another handler down on our heads?”

“It’s not- It's not- Wro _-_ It's not their site.”

Clarke arches an eyebrow.

“Volkoff told me about it.”

Clarke scoffs. “My question still stands, then.”

“We’ll be safe there for now.”

\--

Lexa looks up and down the street before she crouches to recover a key from a crack in the concrete step. She glances into the dusty corridor and then tosses her duffle inside and waves Clarke in ahead of her. She closes the door behind them and drops them into darkness, her heartbeat slowing a little with each lock she throws closed.

She revels in the quiet in her head for a brief moment before running down the list of mission imperatives that rise unbidden into consciousness. Switch panel under their palm, lights stay off. Guide the asset forward by the elbow, keep a weapon in their free hand-

Lightning shoots across her back and she exhales sharply.

_Reevaluate._

The asset isn't a _complete_ idiot. She drops Clarke's elbow in favour of drawing their gun. Plant heel, roll forward onto toe, the outer edges of the staircase will buckle less under their weight.

_Prizrak._

Upward pressure on the doorknob at the top of the fifth set of steps. Turn slowly, inch the door open wide enough to slip inside. Gun raised, cover the trigger. Focus on sounds, let sight adjust.

The door shuts behind them with a deafening click.

They whirl. The sunbeams breaking through cracked blinds glint off blonde locks.

_“[I expected-]”_

_Wrong-_

_“[I expected-]”_

_Wrong-_

_“[I expected you ten minutes-]”_

_Wrongwrongwrongwrongwr-_

“- down. Lexa?”

The space behind her left eye twists, and she narrows her eyes at the gun she can't remember raising. “Fuck's sake, Griffin,” she says after a moment, after she’s caught her breath and wrestled the gun back to her side. Tension stays heavy in her limbs and she bites out a laugh. “You really do have a death wish.”

“I didn't-”

“Save it.” She squeezes past Clarke to throw the door locks before edging along the wall to the nearest window. A quick glance around the frame doesn’t reveal any pressing concerns; no sightlines from above for anyone to get a bead on them. Still, she stays low and tight to the wall to check the other set of windows. There's a brick wall opposite, a rusting fire escape clinging to their building.

When she ducks her head into the bathroom she finds nothing but mildew.

“You’re good,” she calls over to Clarke, stock still and frowning where she waits by the door. “Windows are clear, but don’t go giving someone an easy shot.”

Clarke lets her bags fall with a thud, hands curling into fists as she storms across the room and comes to a halt a step from Lexa.

Lexa’s breath freezes in her lungs at the storm clouds in Clarke's eyes. Her eyes- Her _eyes-_ There's something unsettling about being nose to nose- She rocks up onto her toes, and the feeling abates, allows her to break through the static and focus on Clarke's voice.

“- going to get cleaned up, and then we’re going to talk about this.”

Lexa nods automatically. The way her gaze lingers on Clarke as she strides towards the washroom feels just as automatic, though hazy memories don't provide much in the way of explanation.

The click of the door bolt sliding into place startles her from further investigation, instead leaving her perplexed by the warmth in her cheeks. After a moment she shakes her head, ignoring the twinge in her chest in favour of a much more mission-critical task.

_Mission objective: sustenance._

\--

Clarke stills in the bathroom doorway, hands stalled in the middle of towel-drying her hair. There's a pot of water boiling over on the stove, boxes of pasta strewn across the countertop, and a hole in the backsplash that perfectly matches the dented can of sauce lying below it.

Lexa holds out the can opener with a world-weary sigh, and Clarke has to try very hard to remember to be upset with her.

She makes short work of the can, rescues the pot from the burner and sets about opening up the pasta. She glances back to find Lexa watching her, face inscrutable. “I can finish up here if you want to shower.”

Lexa reaches up to touch lank hair, then tears her hand away and shakes her head. “Unnecessary.” She moves to the fridge, opens it and peers inside.

Clarke's eyes ache from rolling them so hard. “You've got a week's worth of muck and grime and blood on you, Lexa. You'll feel better if you scrub it off.”

The corner of the fridge door warps in Lexa's grip. “I said it's _fine_ ,” she growls, and then stares for a moment at her hand before unclenching her fingers. She slams the door shut. They both flinch.

“Alright.” Clarke pokes at the spaghetti for a moment before glancing back over. Lexa hasn't moved, her gaze still fixed on her hand. “When's Anya coming?”

Lexa's head snaps up. Her mouth works soundlessly, and then she shakes her head.

“Because she's at the Tower, or because she's a turncoat here, too?”

Lexa's mirthless laugh sends a shiver down her spine. “Because she's _dead,_ Clarke."


End file.
